This article needs additional citations for verification .(January 2021) |
Introduced | 21 April 1992 |
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TLD type | Country code top-level domain |
Status | Active |
Registry | Electronic and Postal Communications Authority (AKEP) |
Sponsor | Electronic and Postal Communications Authority |
Intended use | Entities connected with Albania |
Actual use | Very popular in Albania, also used elsewhere. Sometimes used in the US state of Alabama. |
Registration restrictions | Free for anyone, some restrictions apply only on second level domains (ex: .com.al) which are allowed only for Albanian citizens and businesses registered in Albania |
Dispute policies | Disputes must be with registrant alone; NIC disclaims all legal responsibilities |
Registry website | akep.al |
.al is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Albania. It is administered by the Electronic and Postal Communications Authority of Albania (AKEP).
AKEP recommends that .al domain registrations be performed with one of the AKEP accredited registrars. [1] There are also international registrars that resell .al domains. [2] Domain names should be between 2 and 63 characters. Although the Albanian language has a number of special characters, the registry has not enabled the use of IDN characters.
In the past, registrations were not permitted directly at the second level, but a few existing names were "grandfathered"; they were uniti.al, tirana.al, soros.al, upt.al and inima.al.[ citation needed ]
In 2012 registrars started to resell .al domain names widely making them popular outside Albania as domain hacks.[ citation needed ]
In November 2014 the registry released two character domain names allowing for free landrush.[ citation needed ]
Registrations used to be only beneath the second-levels, i.e., .com.al, .net.al, .org.al, and .edu.al labeled appropriately for the type of organisation, but many now exist directly below .al.[ citation needed ]
As of November 1, 2019, the Autoriteti i Komunikimeve Elektronike dhe Postare (AKEP) has mandated that all AKEP accredited registrars begin verifying and updating the WHOIS contact information for all new domain registrations and Registrant contact modifications.
As of the end of 2022 there were 27,275 registered .al-domains. [3]
A domain name registrar is a company, person, or office that manages the reservation of Internet domain names.
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WHOIS is a query and response protocol that is used for querying databases that store an Internet resource's registered users or assignees. These resources include domain names, IP address blocks and autonomous systems, but it is also used for a wider range of other information. The protocol stores and delivers database content in a human-readable format. The current iteration of the WHOIS protocol was drafted by the Internet Society, and is documented in RFC 3912.
Domain registration is the process of acquiring a domain name from a domain name registrar.
The Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) is a computer network communications protocol standardized by a working group at the Internet Engineering Task Force in 2015, after experimental developments and thorough discussions. It is a successor to the WHOIS protocol, used to look up relevant registration data from such Internet resources as domain names, IP addresses, and autonomous system numbers.