By Muhammad Najat ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Region’s Department of Information Technology (DIT) announced on Sunday that the Kurdistan’s top domain (KRD) will soon be available for public registration around the world. “In an era of increasing global connectivity and with the emergence of billions of new internet users worldwide .KRD eases the limitation of millions of domain names registered in other top level domains such as .com or .net” said Hiwa Afandi, the head of DIT. “Businesses, individuals and organizations worldwide have a new home on internet as the KRG's [Kurdistan Regional Government] Department of Information Technology (DIT), declares Kurdistan's top domain, .KRD, available for public registry," Afandi added. With an increasing number of partnering registrars all over the world, .KRD domain registrations are now available through retailers such as 101Domain, DomainDiscount24, OpenProvider, Namecheap and NameISP. Registrations are also available through brand protection agencies such as MarkMonitor and SafeBrands. "We encourage brands, organizations and individuals to take this opportunity to register the names that are important to them," he said. In August, 2015, The KRG announced a landmark step in the use of ".krd," a top-level domain (TLD) name like those generally reserved for individual countries. In July 2014, ".KRD" was added to the root zone of the Internet and officially delegated, becoming a technical and operational reality on the internet. By operating its own TLD, the KRG will improve its Internet visibility and may boost the region's digital economy, said the DIT, adding that the move offers the worldwide Kurdish community a new online homeland. Top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level domain is "com." Responsibility for management of most top-level domains is delegated to specific organizations like the ICANN, which operates the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority and is in charge of maintaining the DNS root zone.
Interview05-06-2026Full state control of armed groups ‘critical’ to Iraq security: Former US official
