Technology Toolkit

The country code top level domain (ccTLD) for Ireland is .ie. This ccTLD is managed by a not for profit organization in Dublin, Ireland know as the Irish Domain Registry or IEDR. The IEDR is not a regulatory body and provides the service to the public and internet community. The registry is responsible for the provision of IE names and the rules relating to their registration. The IEDR implements a dispute resolution policy for domains through the WIPO and unlike other registries operates Monday to Friday during business hours.

Requirements to register

The IE domain itself is a restricted domain in that only applicants who meet certain criteria may register this name. The two main requirements are: Being based in Ireland or having a strong link to Ireland (both northern and southern Ireland). Where the applicant is not based in Ireland information showing this connection must be provided. Secondly the entity registering the domain must have a connection to the name and where this connection is not obvious, must provide evidence of this connection.

Resellers and registration process

Domains are registered through approved domain resellers and are passed to the domain registry directly for approval. The approval process is carried out by a team of people known as IEDR Hostmasters. It is their responsibility to ensure the registration requirements are adhered to. Communication is passed to the approved reseller in the case where more information is required. This thorough process of vetting has led to both positive and negative effects on the domain names reputation.

Positive and negative aspects to the domain

On the positive side the domain was recently voted the second safest domain in the world after the Finnish ccTLD. Generally speaking IE domains are held in high regard by Irish based internet surfers. It is seen as a mark of quality or authenticity when doing business online and as a result .ie based websites are trusted over their .com cousins. Very rarely are large spam attacks initiated through an IE domain and the rate of hacks and other internet attacks from IE hostnames is quite low.

The price of .ie domain names are higher than the average TLD or ccTLD, but this price has been significantly reduced over the past 2 years, from an average of around 65 to as low as 19 today. This is due to the traditionally large human input required to approve and manage a domain portfolio. Recently the domain registry themselves have implemented an API mechanism to fast track registration, billing and modifications of domain names. This was carried out by liaising with the reseller community to assess their needs on a day to day basis. Because of the successful implementation of this API amongst the community the price of registering IE domains has fallen with some suppliers leading the way in the price reduction.

Future of the domain

The future of the .ie is bright. New technical advancements in the API as well as the continued reduction in the Irish domain price mean the number of registrations is increasing constantly. Increased promotion of the domain brand by the domain registry and reseller community alike has also led to increased registrations.

The main use and intention of .info domain names is not restricted. Yet, there is a common procedure noticed everywhere in internet, where .info domain names are being used by websites providing information from various areas to users.

The use of this domain name for informative websites was done as a part of an announcement made in late 2000, when a public release regarding the top domain names was made. In this announcement, .info came as the leading domain name with around 5.2 million users in its registry as of April 2008. Apart from this, there was another 1.6 million websites with .info domain name, which are active and dedicated for informative purposes in internet.

Since .info domain name is a generic and unrestricted domain name, this could be used by any user, for any purpose. In fact, this is the only top level domain name which was created and used for general purposes without much restrictions and limitations. .info stands for information and hence the name of the websites, using .info domain name clearly reveals that, they are used for such purposes.
Ever after its release and creation, .info domain name was under the maintenance and control of Affilias. This was considered to be the first domain name that supported the IETF standards-based domain name.

The launch of .info domain name was a sunrise period for the trademark owners. This was a rush when this was opened to all. In fact, .info was the first domain name of this kind to be opened in this manner. In the initial stages, a large number of false registrations were made under this domain name. Later this could be identified and this weeded several of those registrations.

Some of the online domain registration services provide free .info registrations. Users will be asked to follow the simple and easy to understand domain registration processes. They could check for the availability of the domain names they require and later get their websites popularized under this name.

If the purpose of the website or the information being conveyed could be used as the first part of the domain name, an extension with .info will clearly reveal the main idea of the website. This will directly help in marketing and popularization of the website. .info is more generic in use, yet users generally take it for granted that all domain names with extension .info carry informative content. This has in a way helped when such websites try for marketing their site.