.al is the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 country code

Country code

Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The best known of these is ISO 3166-1...

 top-level domain

Top-level domain

A top-level domain is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet. The 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, that is, the last label of a...

 (ccTLD) for Albania

Albania

Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...

. It is administered by the Electronic and Postal Communications Authority of Albania (AKEP). Only Albanian citizens, or companies based in Albania can actually register .al domains. Foreigners can register domains through a proxy-registrar or a trustee-service such as MarkMonitor, IsFun or Host.al agents.

2nd level registrations

In the past, registrations were not permitted directly at the second level, but a few existing names were "grandfathered"; they were uniti.al, tirana.al, soros.al, upt.al and inima.al.

3rd level registrations

Registrations used to be only beneath the second-level label appropriate for the type of organization, but many now exist directly below .al. These are the second level domains in current use:

• .com.al for enterprises & commercial organizations
• .edu.al for academic and R&D institutions
• .gov.al for government institutions
• .mil.al for military organizations
• .net.al for organizations dedicated on networking
• .org.al for non-government organizations

Whois Servers

The .al zone has no official whois server. Some of the trustee registrars offer their public whois information for their domains under the zone of .al. An extensive result of all the domains can be found by directing requests to web: http://www.host.al/html/domain/index/domain/$DOMAINNAME.al (ex: http://www.host.al/html/domain/index/domain/univers.al)
Host.al had previously notified of a whois server on port 43 which apparently looks to be down.

External links

• IANA .al whois information
• AKEP Official website of Registering Authority (AKEP)
• Host.al Provides support and may serve as a proxy registrar for the .al domains
• TheHosting ME Another option for .al domains