What is an Internet domain
A domain name is a fundamental element of the Internet’s addressing structure.
The Internet is a vast network of hundreds of millions of interconnected computers worldwide. For all of them to communicate with one another, they must know the exact online location of each device. Every device on the Internet has its own IP address, defined by the Internet Protocol, and each such address is globally unique. These addresses are complex numerical strings and very difficult to remember, which is why domain names were introduced. They are paired with IP addresses and are much easier for humans to use. Domain names are also globally unique and form the Domain Name System (DNS) — the addressing system of the Internet.
A domain name consists of at least two segments separated by a dot (e.g., “domen.rs”), and there are also three-segment names (e.g., “domen.co.rs”), where the dot and the final segment represent the domain extension — in this case, the designation of our national .rs domain.
A segment may contain digits (0–9), letters from various scripts, and the hyphen (-). A segment must be at least two and no more than 63 characters long. It must not contain a hyphen at the beginning or end, nor two consecutive hyphens in the third and fourth positions.
When a domain name is registered, it is entered into a dedicated database and supported by specific Internet infrastructure that allows it to function online. This database and infrastructure are managed by the domain registry. The national registry responsible for the .rs and .срб domains is the Serbian National Internet Domain Registry Foundation (RNIDS).
Domain names once supported only the letters of the English alphabet (ASCII), but with the development of the IDN standard, it became possible for domain names to exist in other world scripts. These may include Cyrillic, Greek, Chinese, Arabic, Indian scripts, and many others, as well as Latin alphabets containing characters not found in English (such as đ, š, ž, ä, ß, ů, and others).
Your domain name defines the web address of your website and your email address, making it an essential component of building your business and your brand (or brands) online. Choosing and registering a recognizable domain name are the first steps in creating a credible online presence and developing your business on the Internet.
What types of domains exist?
End users most commonly view — that is, segment — Internet domains in the following way. Internet domains can be:
Country-code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD)
A top-level domain associated with a specific country or territory. A ccTLD is determined based on the country code defined by the ISO 3166-2 standard, which uses letters of the English alphabet. However, there are ccTLDs with more than two characters — for example, our .срб domain.
Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD)
A top-level domain tied to general concepts or abbreviations, not to any particular country (such as .com, .org, .net, .edu…). There are also new generic domains (new gTLDs) such as .photography, .solutions, .dev, .tech, and many others.
Country-code Second-Level Domain (ccSLD)
A national Internet domain registered beneath a ccTLD and separated from it by a dot. For example, in beograd.org.rs, the extension .org.rs is a ccSLD. The namespace of many ccTLDs is divided into several ccSLDs, each intended for specific categories of registrants (companies, organizations, educational institutions, individuals, academic communities, government bodies…).
Internationalized Domain Name (IDN)
A domain name written in a script other than the English alphabet. In addition to IDN gTLDs (e.g., an IDN version of .com), there are also IDN ccTLDs — national domains in national scripts, such as our Cyrillic .срб domain, as well as domains written in Chinese, Arabic, Indian, and other scripts. This category also includes Latin alphabets with special (diacritical) characters not present in English — all of which are supported under our .rs domain.
What is DNS?
DNS (Domain Name System) is a decentralized, hierarchically organized basic Internet service that enables the translation of textual domain names into numerical labels and vice versa.
DNS allows for easier use of the Internet through domain names, because Internet communication is based on numerical IP addresses that are difficult for people to remember, while DNS enables the use of domain names to identify devices on the Internet.
A DNS server is a device that makes it possible to obtain the corresponding IP address required for communication and data exchange on the Internet for a requested textual web address (defined by the domain name).
DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions) is a technology that ensures the credibility of DNS communication. It is one of the services available to registrants of national domains for protecting the domain names they use.
What are IDNs?
nternationalized Domain Names (IDNs) are all domain names that may contain characters outside the English alphabet (i.e., outside the ASCII code).
These include, for example, Latin letters with diacritics, such as č, ć, š, ž and đ. By supporting these, as well as an additional 36 characters from the Albanian, Ashkali, Bosnian, Bunjevac, Croatian, Czech, German, Hungarian, Montenegrin, Polish, Romanian, Romani, Slovak, Slovenian and Vlach scripts, the .rs domain joined the large global family of top-level IDN domains on December 10th, 2018.
The Cyrillic Internet domain .срб is our first IDN and the second national domain of the Republic of Serbia. After the Russian .рф, it is the second Internet domain in the world whose names can be registered using the Cyrillic script, and registration began on January 27th, 2012. Starting from March 5th, 2019, registration of names using an extended set of Cyrillic characters from the Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Ukrainian and Montenegrin scripts was enabled within the .срб domain.
National IDN domains
The first top-level domains with internationalized names (IDN ccTLDs) were activated on May 5th, 2010, for three domains using the Arabic script, representing Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Russia became the first country to register a Cyrillic domain on May 12th, 2010, with .рф. Serbia was the second country to obtain its Cyrillic domain, .СРБ, on February 5th, 2011. After that, Ukraine was assigned .укр, Kazakhstan .ҚАЗ, and Mongolia received .мон. At the beginning of 2014, Macedonia received its Cyrillic domain .мкд, and later that same year Belarus received .бел, while Bulgaria obtained its .бг at the beginning of 2016. Meanwhile, the European Union domain also received its Cyrillic variant, .ЕЮ, and interestingly, even the older generic domains .org and .com received their Cyrillic variants, .орг and .ком.
In addition to these Cyrillic national Internet domains, there are also 17 national domains in the Arabic script, 13 in Indian scripts, 8 in Chinese scripts, and one each in Greek, Armenian, Georgian and Korean scripts.
What is the WHOIS service?
Checking whether a domain name is already registered or available is done through the WHOIS service. This service provides insight into the domain database and informs users whether a particular domain name has been entered in it. If it has, it provides information about the registrant, the accredited registrar, the servers, and the status of the domain (e.g., active, inactive, under dispute, etc.). Which data will be displayed for registered national .срб and .rs domain names depends on whether the registrant is a natural person (in which case no additional registrant data, other than the registrar and DNS servers, is shown) or a legal entity, which has the option to activate data protection for the domain name.
Through the WHOIS service of RNIDS, the following data about registered national domain names is publicly available:
- the domain name
- the date and time of domain name registration
- the date and time of the last change to the domain registration data
- the date and time of the domain name’s expiration
- the name of the accredited registrar performing registration services for the domain name
- the current status of the domain name (active, reserved, under dispute, etc.)
- DNS server information and other technical data related to the domain name
- information about the registrant, administrative and technical contacts, only if the registrant is a legal entity or an entrepreneur, and if data protection has not been activated
