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, pub ...
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
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
. It was made available in 1989, four years after original
generic top-level domains
Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last level of eve ...
such as
.com
The domain name .com is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. Added at the beginning of 1985, its name is derived from the word ''commercial'', indicating its original intended purpose for domains registere ...
.us
.us is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United States. It was established in early 1985. Registrants of .us domains must be U.S. citizens, residents, or organizations, or a foreign entity with a presence in the United ...
. It is currently administered by the
National Internet Exchange of India
The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) is a non-profit company incorporated under Section 25 of the Companies Act 1956, India Companies Act, 1956 (now section 8 under Companies Act 2013) with an objective of facilitating improved inte ...
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is an Indian autonomous scientific society, operating under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
History
CDAC was created in November 1987, initially as the Centre f ...
(C-DAC). The
Government of India
The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...
issued an executive order in 2004 to transfer responsibility for managing .in domains to the newly created
INRegistry
INRegistry is the organisation responsible for the .in TLD and the native language internationalised domain name TLDs for the country. It was appointed by the government of India, and operates under the authority National Internet Exchange of In ...
under the authority of the
National Internet Exchange of India
The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) is a non-profit company incorporated under Section 25 of the Companies Act 1956, India Companies Act, 1956 (now section 8 under Companies Act 2013) with an objective of facilitating improved inte ...
(NIXI). The
National Informatics Centre
The National Informatics Centre (NIC) is an Indian government department under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The NIC provides infrastructure, IT Consultancy, IT Services including but not limited to architecti ...
(NIC),
ERNET
The Education and Research Network (ERNET) is an autonomous scientific society of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India. ERNET has made a significant contribution to the emergence of networking in the count ...
, and the
Ministry of Defence
{{unsourced, date=February 2021
A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in states ...
were appointed as registrars for the gov.in, res.in and ac.in, and the mil.in domains respectively.
In August 2018, NIXI appointed Neustar Data Infotech (India), a subsidiary of Neustar Inc, to be the country's new registry services provider. Neustar completed migration of existing .in domains to its registry infrastructure in March 2019. Neustar added the ability to register Indian-language domains in native script by enabling end-to-end web portal language support.
Second-level domains
, liberalised policies for the domain allow unlimited second-level registrations under . Unlimited registrations under the previously structured existing zones are also allowed:
* (available to anyone; used by companies, individuals, and organisations in India)
* (intended for banks, registered companies, and trademarks)
* (available to anyone; used by companies, individuals, and organisations in India)
* (intended for shops,
partnership
A partnership is an arrangement where parties, known as business partners, agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests. The partners in a partnership may be individuals, businesses, interest-based organizations, schools, governments o ...
s, liaison offices,
sole proprietorship
A sole proprietorship, also known as a sole tradership, individual entrepreneurship or proprietorship, is a type of enterprise owned and run by one person and in which there is no legal distinction between the owner and the business entity. A sole ...
s)
* (intended for
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
s)
* (intended for
nonprofit organisation
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
s)
* (intended for general/miscellaneous use)
* (intended for individuals)
Zones reserved for use by qualified institutions in India:
* (Older, for both educational and research institutes)
* (Academic institutions)
* (Educational institutions)
* (Indian research institutes)
* (
Indian government
The Government of India (ISO 15919, ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the Government, national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy lo ...
)
* (Indian military organisations)
The domain is reserved for India's
National Informatics Centre
The National Informatics Centre (NIC) is an Indian government department under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The NIC provides infrastructure, IT Consultancy, IT Services including but not limited to architecti ...
, but in practice most Indian government agencies have domains ending in .
The .in registry launched following sub-domains on Oct 29, 2021 to benefit the growing market:
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Before the introduction of liberalised registration policies for the domain, only 7000 names had been registered between 1992 and 2004. , the number had increased to over 610,000 domain names with 60% of registrations coming from India and the rest from overseas. By October 2011, the number had surpassed 1 million domain names. , the number has more than doubled to over 2 million domain names.
Restrictions on use of .in domains
As per the terms and conditions of the registry,
domain privacy Domain privacy (often called Whois privacy) is a service offered by a number of domain name registrars. A user buys privacy from the company, who in turn replaces the user's information in the WHOIS with the information of a forwarding service (for ...
is not allowed.
Recently updated EKYC guidelines were issued to all registrars to authenticate new registrants. Hence, the previous rule relating to bulk booking of .in domain names has been withdrawn. Now customers can book unlimited .in domain names as previously in line with promoting .in TLD on par with other popular TLDs like .com and others which also has no restrictions relating to bulk booking.
Internationalised domain names and country codes
India plans to introduce
internationalised domain name
An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label displayed in Application software, software applications, in whole or in part, in non-latin script or alphabet, such as Arabic, Bengali language, ...
s in the 22 local languages used in India. , fifteen of these internationalised domain names were accepted by
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 namespaces ...
:
* (
Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...
), became available with the following zones:
:
* (
Bengali
Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to:
*something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia
* Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region
* Bengali language, the language they speak
** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
), available
* (
Gurmukhī
Gurmukhī ( pa, ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ, , Shahmukhi: ) is an abugida developed from the Laṇḍā scripts, standardized and used by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1504–1552). It is used by Punjabi Sikhs to write the language, commonly r ...
), only ਡਾਟਾਮੇਲ.ਭਾਰਤ
* (
Gujarati
Gujarati may refer to:
* something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India
* Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat
* Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them
* Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub- ...
), available
* (
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nati ...
), available
* (
Telugu
Telugu may refer to:
* Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India
*Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India
* Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language
** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode
S ...
Bengali
Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to:
*something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia
* Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region
* Bengali language, the language they speak
** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
) it was given to compa etitive applicant, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Company Limited (BTCL). They were not available (): But, they were later on made available and now are open for domain registration in India.
* (
Kannada
Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...
Kashmiri Kashmiri may refer to:
* People or things related to the Kashmir Valley or the broader region of Kashmir
* Kashmiris, an ethnic group native to the Kashmir Valley
* Kashmiri language, their language
People with the name
* Kashmiri Saikia Baruah ...
)
* (
Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was des ...
)
* (
Odia
Odia, also spelled Oriya or Odiya, may refer to:
* Odia people in Odisha, India
* Odia language, an Indian language, belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family
* Odia alphabet, a writing system used for the Odia languag ...
)
* (
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
Country code top-level domain
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 ...
*
Internet in India
Internet in India began in 1986 and was available only to the educational and research community. General public access to the internet began on 15 August 1995, and as of July 2022 there are 833 million active internet users that comprise 59.28% ...