.cz is the

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 tw ...

(ccTLD) for the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

administered by CZ.NIC.

History

Until

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

was dissolved in 1993, it used the domain '' .cs''.The .cz domain came into effect in January 1993, following the

dissolution of Czechoslovakia The dissolution of Czechoslovakia, which took effect on December 31, 1992, was the Self-determination, self-determined Partition (politics), partition of the federal republic of Fifth Czechoslovak Republic, Czechoslovakia into the independent ...

. In 2009, new European Union legislation came into effect, allowing the use of

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

s in

second-level domain In the Domain Name System (DNS) hierarchy, a second-level domain (SLD or 2LD) is a domain that is directly below a top-level domain (TLD). For example, in , is the second-level domain of the TLD. Second-level domains commonly refer to the organ ...

s under the .eu domain only.

Registration

The .cz domain, operated by the CZ.NIC association, continued to only offer standard characters, citing insufficient demand and lower accessibility from abroad as reasons behind their decision. Czech customers were among the most interested in the new domains, only Germans bought more, with the French in third. Over 850,000 internet sites had been registered as .cz by the end of 2011. In 2012, the number exceeded one million. The Czech Republic was therefore the 12th European Union member state with a top-level domain to top a million active domain names. At the end of 2011, CZ.NIC reported that ownership of all domains, 58% were by individuals, whereas those held by organisations accounted for a minority of 42%. Domains were most popular in

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

, followed by

Brno Brno ( , ; ) is a Statutory city (Czech Republic), city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava (river), Svitava and Svratka (river), Svratka rivers, Brno has about 403,000 inhabitants, making ...

and

Ostrava Ostrava (; ; ) is a city in the north-east of the Czech Republic and the capital of the Moravian-Silesian Region. It has about 283,000 inhabitants. It lies from the border with Poland, at the confluences of four rivers: Oder, Opava (river), Opa ...

Requirements

Registrations must be ordered via accredited

domain name registrar A domain name registrar is a company, person, or office that manages the reservation of Internet domain names. A domain name registrar must be accredited by a generic top-level domain (gTLD) Domain name registry, registry or a country code top-l ...

s. The maximum domain name length permitted is 63 characters, which may only be

alphanumeric Alphanumericals or alphanumeric characters are any collection of number characters and letters in a certain language. Sometimes such characters may be mistaken one for the other. Merriam-Webster suggests that the term "alphanumeric" may often ...

or the hyphen (-). Hyphens are restricted in that they may not be the first or last character, neither may they appear consecutively. As of 2013, there are six domains which use the maximum of 63 characters.

References

External links

IANA .cz whois information
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cz Country code top-level domains Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries members Internet properties established in 1993 sv:Toppdomän#C