.hk is the designated

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

country code Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes ( geocodes) developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term ...

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...

(

ccTLD A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all t ...

) for

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

. It is administered by the Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation (HKIRC), the only organization endorsed by the

Hong Kong Government The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, commonly known as the Hong Kong Government or HKSAR Government, refers to the executive authorities of Hong Kong SAR. It was formed on 1 July 1997 in accordance with the Sino-B ...

to undertake the administration of 'hk' domain names. Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation (HKIRC) is a non-profit making, non-statutory, member-based corporation established in 2001.

History

From its inception in 1990 until 2002, the domain was administered by the Joint University Computer Centre. In 2002, through a "Memorandum of Understanding" with the Hong Kong government, HKIRC took over the administration of '.hk', while the Hong Kong Domain Name Registration Corporation Limited (HKDNR), its wholly owned subsidiary of HKIRC, is responsible for the day-to-day management of the registration service for Specific '.hk' Domain Names and Generic '.hk' Domain Name (e.g., www.myname.hk). '.hk' domain names can be registered at both the second and third level. On June 25, 2010,

ICANN The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespac ...

approved the use of the internationalized country code top-level domain .香港 (''hongkong'' in

simplified Chinese characters Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters used in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore, as prescribed by the '' Table of General Standard Chinese Characters''. Along with traditional Chinese characters, they are ...

and

traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are one type of standard Chinese character sets of the contemporary written Chinese. The traditional characters had taken shapes since the clerical change and mostly remained in the same structure they took ...

; DNS name: ) by HKIRC. This TLD was added to the DNS in July 2010. The Pre Launch Priority Registration for .香港 was started on February 22, 2011. The first .香港 domain was activated on March 23, 2011. 香港 domain categories were opened for public registration since May 31, 2011.

Usage outside Hong Kong

Some

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

2ch ''2CH'' was a commercial radio station in Sydney, Australia. It was owned by Pacific Star Network. The station changed formats on 10 June 2022 to sports. History 2CH commenced broadcasting on 15 February 1932 on 1210 kHz. It moved to ...

style imageboards use .hk webnames, such as iichan.hk and 2ch.hk.

Domain categories

A Chinese domain name must contain at least one

Chinese character Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji ...

but can contain English letters as long as there is at least 1 Chinese character while English domain names must not contain any Chinese characters. All domain names could contain

alphanumeric Alphanumericals or alphanumeric characters are a combination of alphabetical and numerical characters. More specifically, they are the collection of Latin letters and Arabic digits. An alphanumeric code is an identifier made of alphanumeric ...

characters and

hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes ( figur ...

Accredited registrars

As of July 1, 2018.

Local registrars

* HKDNR (wholly owned subsidiary of HKIRC) *UDomain Web Hosting Company Limited * Eranet International * HKT * Speedy Group * Hu Yi Global

International registrars

* Instra Corporation * Atak Domain *

Alibaba Cloud Alibaba Cloud, also known as Aliyun (), is a cloud computing company, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group. Alibaba Cloud provides cloud computing services to online businesses and Alibaba's own e-commerce ecosystem. Its international operations are re ...

* Foshan Yidong * Chengdu West Dimension * Shenzhen Internet Works * Shanghai Meicheng * TopNets Technology * Bizcn.com * Ascio Technologies * SafeBrands * united-domains * 1API * InterNetX * EuroDNS * Web Commerce Communications (Singapore) * Hosting Concepts * IP Mirror * AB Name ISP * Net-Chinese * Crazy Domains * Safenames * 101 Domain * MarkMonitor * Marcaria.com * CSC Corporate Domains

Notes

References

External links

Joint University Computer Centre

Hong Kong Domain Name Registration Company Limited

.HK Domain Registration and Information Service
{{DEFAULTSORT:HK Country code top-level domains Internet in Hong Kong sv:Toppdomän#H