Tech Shout!

The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) and Afilias India Private Ltd. have announced that the ‘.in’ Indian domain has reached the 200,000 registration mark, almost doubling its existence in the market place since last year.

.in is basically the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for India. The Indian domain is operated by INRegistry under the authority of NIXI. INRegistry was appointed by the government of India.

The .in domain registry has grown to nearly 30 times the initial size of approximately 6500 domains prior to the January 2005 re-launch. The re-launch .in domain names included a more competitive price, expanded eligibility, a state of the art technology platform, and broader distribution through the global registrar network.

According to NIXI, while India rated 63% in the usage of ‘.in’ domain name, 37% were registered outside Indian soil. More than 150 countries are represented by ‘.in’ domain owners. The most popular countries to buy Indian domain names are India, U.S. and Germany, which together account for over 81% of registrations, followed by the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Switzerland and Italy.

“This is an important milestone in the 10 Point Agenda for India I introduced in 2004, as ‘.in’ is now firmly established as a leading country code domain and reflects India’s leadership in technology and the Internet,” said Dayanidhi Maran, Minister of Communications and Information Technology.

Maran added that the Government would soon launch the registration of ‘.in’ domains names in native Indian languages, Tamil and Malayalam to be the first ones. Since ‘.in’ is unrestricted, organizations and individuals across India can now interact with their audience with an internet address that proudly proclaims their Indian affinity. NIXI has brought a greater market focus to ‘.in’ domains and has helped to spread the internet in India. All Indians on the internet should register their ‘.in’ domain names now while great names are still available.

“We are proud to support .in” said Ram Mohan, Director of Afilias India, who provides technical support to the .in domain. Afilias is a fully integrated provider of domain name registry services, maintains international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, sales offices in London, England, sales and operational facilities in Toronto, administrative offices in the U.S. near Philadelphia, PA, and operational offices in New Delhi, India.

The initiative of setting up of the hardware and software and re-launching the ‘.in’ Registry was taken up by The Department of Information Technology (DIT) and NIXI. The entire process of Indian domain name registration is available online. NIXI said the opening of the ‘.in’ Registry has significantly enhanced and broadened the availability of the domain names.