.gov.ukUnited Kingdom

Type :	.gov.uk
Country :	United Kingdom
Terms & Conditions :	http://www.ja.net/
IDN Enableda :	No
Delete Protectionb :	No
Super Lockc :	No
Domain Recoveryd :	No
Minimum Renew :	1 year(s)
Maximum Renew :	10 year(s)
Default Registration Period :	1 year(s)
Maxium Registration Period :	10 year(s)
Must be Positively Renewed :	1
Grace Periode :	- day(s)
Autorenew Grace Periodf :	-8 day(s)
Domain Must be Renewed Before Expiry :	Yes
Transfers are Prohibited forg :	- day(s)
Redemption Periodh :	days
Fee for Recovery From Redemptioni :	$
Usage :	UK Government departments only
Actual Usage :	UK Government departments only

.uk is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United Kingdom. As of July 2008, it is the fifth most popular top-level domain worldwide (after .com, .cn, .de and .net), with over 7 million registrations.

The use of .uk rather than .gb for the top-level domain is due to its pre-existing use in the (now obsolete) JANET Name Registration Scheme in which the order of address components were reversed. .uk was made available in DNS to simplify the translation to and from these addresses. There were plans for eventual transition to .gb to accord with correct usage, but this never occurred; the use of .uk is now entrenched as it is impossible to register a .gb domain.

As with other ccTLDs in the early days it was originally delegated to an individual by Jon Postel. In time, it passed to Dr Willie Black at the UK Education and Research Networking Association. Originally, Domain requests were emailed, manually screened by and then forwarded to the UK Naming Committee before being processed by UKERNA. Membership of this Committee was restricted to a group of high-end ISPs who were part of a formal peering arrangement.

The Naming Committee was organised as a mailing list to which all proposed names were circulated. The members would consider the proposals under a ruleset that insisted that all domain names should be very close if not identical to a registered busiess name of the registrant. Members of the Naming Committee could object to any name, and if a small number of objections were received, the name was refused. In addition to the 'matching' requirement, there was also a restriction that any company should only have a single domain name.

By the mid-1990s the growth of the Internet, and particularly the advent of the World Wide Web was pushing requests for domain name registrations up to levels that were not manageable by a group of part-time voluntary managers. Oliver Smith of DemonInternet forced the issue by providing the committee with a series of automated tools, called the "automaton", which formalised and automated the naming process end to end. This allowed many more registrations to be processed far more reliably and rapidly, and inspired individuals such as Ivan Pope to explore more entrepreneurial approaches to registration.

It is possible to directly register a domain name with Nominet UK but it is faster and cheaper to do it via a Nominet tag holder.

How Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assign the .gov.uk 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.

General information on .gov.uk, the country it represents and its uses.

You may renew your .gov.uk 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 British (gov.uk) Domains:

.uk, .co.uk, .ltd.uk, .me.uk, .org.uk, .plc.uk, .ac.uk, .gov.uk, .net.uk, .sch.uk,