Mar 10 2010
First .in registered domain
I received comment on my previous post “Oldest registered Internet domain name” by Ceres from Inforum.in. This made me do some research on it. There is bit history attached to first .in domain.
The first .in domain was 2nd level domain and that is www.ncst.ernet.in. You might consider ernet.in could be the first .in domain but it is not like that.
ERNET India was established in 1998 for operating, maintaining, and further developing the Education and Research Network. National Center for Software Technology (NCST)—The NCST (www.ncst.ernet.in) was research center opened in a northern suburb of Mumbai (Now it is named as CDAC). It was the first ERNET member organization to establish an international connection to the Internet, and is the .in national top-level domain (TLD) manager (i.e., NCST is the registrar for the .in TLD). Another organization National Informatics Center (NIC) was established in 1975 by the Planning Commission to act as a centralized source of information and services for the government.
To understand in brief, there is India Network Time Line map as follows:
india-network-time-line
The National Center for SoftwareTechnology (NCST) had played a critical role in the development of the Internet in India. NCST was the first institution in India to establish an international connection to the Internet, and acquired along with the connection the responsibility for managing the .in national TLD, since they established a root-server and the first .in domain (ncst.ernet.in).
NCST was not charging any amount for registering .in domain. Then also only 400 domains were registered before 1998. This is because of strict prerequisites to register the domain. In order to register a particular name, the applicant must produce either a company registration form or trademark registration that proves that the company is entitled to use the name for which it is applying.
When VSNL set up a subsidiary called VSSL to handle its Internet business, they wanted to do business under vssl.co.in. NCST registered both names, but did not assign the .co domain to VSNL thou it was subsidiary who was managing Internet Gateways of India.
In 1998 NCST indicated that 435 third-level domains had been registered under seven
Second-level categories (co.in, ac.in, res.in, gov.in, mil.in, net.in, org.in). The first first level .in was the UUNET.in domain, and an undetermined number of domains/hosts under the nic.in domain, none of which were reflected on the NCST list.
I am trying to use my contacts to find more info on .in domains, as I am ex-alumni of NCST.
I will keep you posted on it.
[...] on .in and could able to find few facts about .in domain names. I have done another post of First .in registered domain Name. Thanks for inspiring me to post one more post. __________________ Domainer blog : Domain Name [...]
i saw few .ins with 2003 regs too so uunet.in is not first .in i think
No, I did research on it and could able to find it that uunet.in was reportedly first .in domain name. Then also I will try to contact NCST for more clarification. But As you know they are GOVT institute and will be slow in reply. Dont just rely on whois.
Thanks for the info! Archive.org shows that ncst.ernet.in definitely existed in February 1997.
I thought the oldest first and second level Indian domains would be a bit more exciting than UUNET.in and ncst.ernet.in!
I hope you succeed in getting more info about this subject!
I will try, and will definitely post the details if I am able to get.