European domains: Iceland (.is)

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Registration:

To register your Icelandic domain, click here!

Is your domain name working hard enough?

Currently, whether you have registered a .com or a .co.uk domain there are no restrictions if you would like to register both versions of your domain name - and many people do!.

Of course, the choice is all a matter of your preference - .com is often regarded as "International" where the .co.uk domain is deemed to be "UK only", usually it depends on the target market.

Whilst, the .com domain is recognised world wide, it is easier to remember and to type, and there is a whole world full of people who could register it before you do!

If your target is primarily the UK market then registering just the .co.uk domain would seem to be the obvious choice. The .co.uk instantly identifies you as a UK company and often, given a list of URLs in a search engine, people will choose a domain / URL with their country code. Therefore, it follows that if you want to extend your target market then registering your domain with other country-code top-level domains (ccTLD) will expand your target audience.

Registering both .com and .co.uk (and others such as .at, .dk, .es, .eu, .ie, .it, .nz, .se etc) domain names in fact makes very good sense - it stops anyone else from registering your name and leaves it ready for you to use either right away or in the future. Did you know that with Web Forwarding you can have as many domain names as you like pointing to a single website - see Web Forwarding below.

Email Forwarding

Create an almost unlimited number of unique Email addresses for your domain name (e.g. me@yourdomain.com, info@yourdomain.com,sales@yourdomain.com, etc.) and forward them to your existing email account(s). Set up each employee or family member with their own personal Email address.

Catch All Email

Simply tell us 'one' address to have all your messages sent to and all of your emails will be forwarded to that address.

Web Forwarding

If you already have a website, start using your domain name without the additional cost of hosting. When a user enters your domain name into their browser, they'll be redirected to your existing website.

You can have many domain names forwarded to a single website.

Web Hosting

We offer several Web Hosting packages to suit your needs. Packages start 1gb of bandwidth (per month) and 30mb of disk storage on our server, plus 24hr access to maintain your website from anywhere in the world.

Search Engine Submission

Submit your website to 1000+ search engines, increasing both your web presence and your website traffic!

Web Design Templates

Get a professionally designed website without the cost of a professinal web designer by Googling for "web design templates" and find lots of free ready-to-use websites templates that you can download immediately.

Background

ISNIC (Internet á Íslandi hf.) was founded in 1995 in order to operate the Icelandic Internet (ISnet).

ISNIC was established. However the initial connections to the European EUnet network were run under the auspices of the University of Iceland and the Icelandic Marine Research Institute.

The Icelandic network grew rapidly and by 1995 the members of the above organizations decided that the network's operation needed to be established in a formal manner. The network was, at this time, used by all Internet users in Iceland, including the Universities, the government, large companies and the rest of the educational system. Most of the user companies etcetera became shareholders in the new company. ISNIC grew rapidly during its first years of operation it became

Iceland's first member of RIPE and was allocated the first IP addresses in Iceland (130.208.0.0/16), the first Autonomous System number (1850) and inherited the management role for the .IS ccTLD, which had been delegated to SURIS in 1988 by IANA.

In 2001 ISNIC was restructured as a smaller company responsible for the .IS ccTLD management and in 2007, Internet á Íslandi hf. was acquired by a group of investors and subsequently merged with Modernus ehf. the operators of the icelandic coordinated web measurement system. These measurements continue under the ISNIC name.

Today ISNIC concentrates on three core competencies; (1) Operating the .IS ccTLD (country-code Top-Level Domain), (2) Operating the Reykjavik Internet Exchange, and (3) The Icelandic coordinated web traffic measurement system.

Currently the following criteria needs to be met in order to register a ".is" domain name:

• Only letters of the English alphabet;

• Numerals (0-9);

• Hyphen (-);

• The Icelandic letters á, æ, é, ð, í, ó, ö, þ, ú and ý

• A domain name shall not begin or end with a hyphen, and shall not contain a hyphen in both third and fourth position. (Due to the IDN's punycode wich allows the Icelandic characters to be registered in the domain name.)

• A domain name, including the ending .is, shall not be longer then 66 letters. ACE encoding of a domain name shall not be longer than 59 letters. (The encoding used in International domain names IDN's)

The ISNIC currently operates on a "first come, first served" basis. This applies if there are numerous applications for the same domain name.

The registrant is responsible for ensuring that the registered ".is" domain is within the limits of Icelandic law. The registrant is also responsible for payments of any fees regarding delegation and renewal of the domain name.

The following second level domain names are currently managed by the ISNIC:

A ".is" domain is valid for one year at a time. However if the annual renewal fee has not been received by the domain's expiration date the ".is" domain will be suspended by ISNIC. If suspended more than 60 days the ISNIC will remove the domain name from the registry and the rights to the domain then become void and the domain becomes available for registration again.

Should the registrant of a domain decide to change custodian, which implies changes in the delegation records, the domain's administrative or technical contact requests such a change via the appropriate ISNIC web form. Should ISNIC perform the redelegation a fee is charged to the billing contact.

.IS delegation requirements are as follows:

1. The nameservers must be registered with ISNIC.

2. Nameservers must allow connection to UDP port 53, and to TCP port 53 as well.

3. SOA records must be correctly formatted:

a. Master nameserver correctly named in the MNAME field.

b. Working mailbox of responsible party in RNAME field.

c. Times (refresh, retry and expire) according to RFC1912

4. TTL for NS records not lower than 24 hours.

5. Correct NS records. Properly registered in the appropriate zones, both forward and reverse. i.e. the nameserver's name must be included in the PTR record set for the nameserver's IP address.