ir-domain Domain

The domain extension .ir is the country-specific top-level domain of Iran, which was introduced in 1994 and is administered by the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IRNIC) in Tehran.

Iran has about 81 million inhabitants, of which 8.7 million live in the capital Tehran. The country is among the 20 most populous and largest countries in the world. The country, which is steeped in history, consists mainly of large mountain ranges and dry deserts. Its geographical location on the Caspian Sea and the Strait of Hormus on the Persian Gulf gives Iran great geostrategic importance.

The allocation of the top-level domain ir. is only carried out under strict controls and guidelines. Although all people and companies without residence in Iran can register, this is only possible under certain conditions. Companies can only register a domain if they enter their commercial register number. For private individuals, on the other hand, the ID number is required to register a domain.

No liberalisation or relaxation of the award criteria has taken place so far and is not planned. The last change to the top-level domain took place in 2008. At that time, the fees for the .ir domain were lowered, which attracted a lot of attention, as all other domains had increased their fees.

For a long time, internationalized domain names were not available in Iran. However, they are now supported and the IDN ending was adopted in October 2010 during ICANN's IDN Fast Track Process. Other countries that participated in this process were India, Syria and Taiwan.

In total there are 600,000 different registered .ir domains from individuals and companies worldwide. This top-level domain also includes the so-called second-level domains. Academic institutions have the suffix .ac before the actual domain, commercial organizations .co, governmental institutions .gov, private individuals .id, internet service providers .net, non-profit organizations .org and schools have the suffix .sch.

Within the country there are the most registrations of the domain. The share of foreign registrations is still manageable. At present, there are no known foreign companies worth mentioning or known foreign companies that rely on the .ir domain extension.