Procedures and Guides

IANA Procedures

• Format and Technical Requirements for Requests to Change TLD Nameservers in the Root Zone
• Placing TLD delegation signer information in the root zone
• Procedures for delegating test IDN top-level domains
• Information regarding online root management system

Policy Guidance

The following documents help guide IANA in managing the DNS root zone:

• Domain Name System Structure and Delegation (RFC 1591, March 1994)
• Internet Domain Name System Structure and Delegation (ICP-1, May 1999)

Country-code Top-level Domain specific-information

Country-code Top-level Domains (ccTLDs) are two-letter top-level domains especially designated for a particular country or autonomous territory to use to service their community.

Establishment of new ccTLDs

IANA follows the ISO 3166-1 standard to determine which countries are eligible for country-code top-level domains, as published by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency. If the proposed new ccTLD does not reflect a country currently listed in the ISO 3166-1 standard, please read IANA's Procedures for Establishing ccTLDs for more information.

Countries listed in the ISO 3166-1 standard are eligible for their "alpha-2" code represented in that standard. Certain countries may also be eligible for non-Latin IDN country-code top-level domains through the ICANN IDN Fast Track process.

Once a country code is assigned in ISO 3166-1, and/or string eligibility has been determined through the ICANN IDN Fast Track process, prospective managers of the domain may apply to ICANN following a similar procedure to ccTLD redelegation, described below.

Redelegation of existing ccTLDs

The process of changing the designated manager(s) of a ccTLD is known as redelegation. This process is conducted according to the principles described in ICP-1 and RFC 1591. For a simplified summary of the process that is followed in implementing these principles, see the ccTLD Delegation and Redelegation Step-by-Step Overview. The IANA Reports listed below illustrate many of the considerations made in the decision whether to redelegate.