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Author:
Clare Lawrence

An Alternative to the .COM Domain?

By Clare Lawrence CEO Discount Domains Ltd, March 2003

Small countries such as Tonga, Turkmenistan and Niue are offering an alternative to customers that have been squeezed out of the Internet as .com domain names have been registered.

It is sometimes the unhappy task of a Domain registrar company, such as Discount Domains to tell clients that their preferred names in the .com domain are already registered or must be purchased from a cyber-squatter for a large amount of money.

With the anticipated opening of new domains, such as .eu, the solution is often a longer, harder to remember name and less search engine friendly domain name.

The above countries allow users to register in their domain space. Web hosting companies can suggest that their clients register their sites in the .to (Tonga), .tm (Turkmenistan) or .nu (Niue) domains, enabling them to get the shorter, catchier name that was taken in the .com domain.

The obvious drawback is many companies prefer the more familiar .com designation.

A possible further consideration is the political stability of smaller countries, only recently part of the Soviet Union. Niue meanwhile has been the most successful of the countries. The tiny island nation is registering Internet Web sites under the .nu address for US $25.

By January 2001, after only 18 months as an active TLD, .nu domain usage has swelled, making .nu the sixteenth most popular domain name in the world. The company that maintains the registry, .NU Domain Ltd [http://www.nunames.nu], has registered 30,000 .nu domain names, as of January 2001 on the Internet, with registrations of .nu domain names more than doubling since then.

As .nu gains recognition, domain name registrars will have an effective way to provide clients the personal, distinct domain names they desire.

And what are the benefits for Niue? The island nation is getting 25 per cent of the gross after payment of commissions. The money is being used by the Niue Internet Users' Society to provide residents and the government with free Internet connections.

About the Author
Clare Lawrence is CEO of Discount Domains Ltd – A leading UK provider of Domain name registration and Web Hosting services. Please feel free to re-publish this article provided this reference box remains together with a hyperlink to http://www.discountdomainsuk.com Clare can also be contacted on clare@discountdomainsuk.com

A Quick Note From The Publisher... If you like the article above, you may be interested in the following article which is also related to Domain Names... Buying Domain Names Without Getting Robbed As domain names continue to make its way to popularity, the process of buying domain names now becomes a certain commodity. In fact, right now hundreds of companies in the business of buying domain names, either as domain name registrars in their own right or as domain name resellers of domain name registrar services, are really into it. So if you are one of them and you have an intense desire for buying domain names, you should then know some facts and some helpful tactics when it comes to the business of buying domain names. Here it is. There are indeed several important things to be paid attention when buying domain names. First is those is the fact that when buying domain names, you need access to two name servers, or at least the address of two name servers that you are entitled to apply. Speaking of the name servers, it is interesting to know that those are the machines that convert a domain name into the underlying Internet Protocol or IP address. Due to such importance of the name servers in the process of buying domain names, most companies today include some name server access as part of their general service; however, there are also some companies that charge some extra amount for such service. In the process of buying domain names, it is just a typical thing that you give the appropriate and accurate contact information for the truth that it is so common to come across domain names with phony or blank ownership records. However, as the domain name registrars tightened the rules surrounding the information contained in the contact portion of the business for buying domain names, some sorts of gradual crackdown are going on. Even though there is some control in the rules for buying domain names, many experts still recommend the use of a permanent email...