.ieIreland

Applicant must either be Irish, an Irish company or prove a trading link with Ireland.

.ie is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Republic of Ireland. However, the registration criteria open the domain to registrants located in, or with a significant connection to, the island of Ireland, including Northern Ireland.

The .ie domain was managed by University College, Dublin, Dublin, since its delegation from Jon Postel in 1989, until the creation of IE Domain Registry (IEDR) in 2000; the university is still the IANA Sponsoring Organization. The IEDR is consideredmore conservative than other similar authorities and places certain restrictions on registration. For example it has a policy against personal names. This is due to .ie ccTLD being a primarily business orientated ccTLD for Irish businesses and businesses doing business in or with Ireland.

Registration policies have been liberalised somewhat in recent years and rules such as the one against registering generic domain names have been dropped. Applicants for .ie domain names still have to provide proof of entitlement to the domain that they want to register.

The .ie ccTLD is operated on a managed registry basis by IEDR. As a result, some town and village websites (such as Killavullen) have opted for a .com domain instead. These websites are often voluntarily run by residents. Most of the town, city and county councils have registered their .ie domain. The .ie ccTLD has strong restrictions on the registration of geographic names and will generally permit only the town, city or county council to register such names.

The retail cost of a .ie domain can be anywhere from €50 to &euro200, a great deal more than a domain in a TLD such as .com or .net. This traditionally high price has ensured that .ie has grown more slowly than the number of Irish registered .com/.net/.org/.biz/.info domains. However IEDR has been reducing the wholesale (trade) price of .ie over the last few years and the number of registered .ie domains has been growing accordingly.

The normal way of registering a .ie domain is via a .ie Reseller though it is possible to register a domain directly through IEDR. A direct registration is typically more expensive.

There is no official second level domain policy yet. However some obvious second level domains such as edu.ie and gov.ie exist. There has been discussion in the Irish internet community over the years about introducing second level domains though little has been done.

The Irish Government uses subdomains of the gov.ie domain for many of its websites but each government department now has its own .ie domain. The main Irish Government portal website is at irlgov.ie.

A number of domain names, typically those of other TLDs, two letter domains and potentially offensive domains (such as porn.ie) are forbidden from being registered. However two character domains consisting of one letter and one number are permitted.The only exception to the two letter rule is the ul.ie domain which was registered by the University of Limerick before the rule came into effect. The domains in the forbidden category will return a record for a WHOIS query but they are not in the .ie zone.

In April 2008 the number of registered .ie domains exceeded 100,000. Part of that growth was due to the introduction of Personal Domain Names in October 2007. A Personal Domain Name allowed an individual to register their own name or a variant of itwith a utilities bill or passport as proof of entitlement. The .ie extension is growing in popularity in Ireland. While it has not yet surpassed the number of Irish owned .com domain names it is the preferred extension for new Irish businesses. Approximately 130 new .ie domains are registered each working day.

Population

2008 estimate 4,422,100 - 2006 census 4,239,848 (121st) - Density 60.3/km2 (139th) 147.6/sq mi

GDP

(PPP) 2007 estimate - Total $188.372 billion (50th) - Per capita $43,413 (IMF) (7th)

National Anthem

AmhrÈín na bhFiann The Soldier's Song

Area

Total 70,273 km2 (120th) 27,133 sq mi - Water (%) 2.00

International Dialling Code

353

Currency

Euro (€)

Population type

White: 94.8% (including 0.5% Irish Traveller) Asian: 1.3% Black: 1.1% Other/Mixed: 1.1% Not Stated: 1.7%

Government

Republic and Parliamentary democracy - Independencefrom the United Kingdom - Declared 24 April 1916 - Ratified 21 January 1919 - Recognised 6 December 1922 - Current constitution 29 December 1937 EU

Language

Irish, English

Time Zone

WET (UTC+0) - Summer (DST) IST (WEST) (UTC+1)
Ireland is a country in north-western Europe. The modern sovereign state occupies about five-sixths of the island of Ireland, which was first partitioned on 3 May 1921. It is bordered by Northern Ireland part of the United Kingdom to the north, by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Irish Sea to the east and the Celtic Sea and St George's Channel to the South and South-East. The legal name of the state is simply "Ireland", but its legal description "the Republic of Ireland" is sometimes used to differentiate the state from the island.

On 29 December 1937 Ireland became the successor-state to the Irish Free State, itself established on 6 December 1922. Ireland was one of the poorest countries in Western Europe and had high emigration. The protectionist economy was opened in the lae 1950s and Ireland joined the European Communities (now the European Union) in 1973. An economic crisis led Ireland to start large-scale economic reforms in the late 1980s. Ireland reduced taxation and regulation dramatically compared to other EU countries.

Background information supplied by Wikipedia.It is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License

How Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assign the .ie domain. IANA is a department of ICANN, a non-profit private American corporation, they oversees IP address allocation, root zone management in the Do main Name System (DNS), and other Internet related symbols and numbers.

Domain Facts & Figures : Billing Periods, Renewal details, delegation details and more. Everything you need to know about your Ireland .(ie) domain.

You may renew your .ie domain without logging into your control panel by using our quick and painfree renewal service, or even transfer it into nominate to be renewed if necessary.

Other Irish (ie) Domains:

.ie, .ie.nu,