ICANN excerpted from " Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers Guidelines for Accreditation of Internet Domain Name Registrars and for the Selection of Registrars for the Shared Registry System Testbed for .com, .net and .org domains - DRAFT" - February 8, 1999 U.S. President Clinton, as part of his Administration's activities in support of global electronic commerce, announced a process leading to the privatization of the domain name system (DNS) in a directive dated July, 1997.

Subsequently, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued a Request for Comment and after receiving public comment, developed "A Proposal to Improve the Technical Management of Internet Names and Addresses," known as the Green Paper, in January, 1998 (published in 63 Fed. Reg. .8826-33 (Feb. 20, 1998)).

A principal aim of the Green Paper was to "privatize the management of Internet Names and Addresses in a manner that allows for the development of robust competition and facilitates global participation in Internet management."

(U.S. Department of Commerce, "Management of Internet Names and Addresses," (White Paper) describing the Green Paper).

Among the factors cited in the Green Paper as requiring change in DNS management was, "There is widespread dissatisfaction about the absence of competition in domain name registration."

Among other steps to enhance competition, the Green Paper proposed moving the system for registering second level domain names into a competitive environment by creating two market driven businesses: registration of second level domain names and the management of gTLD registries.

Following further public comment, the Green Paper was substantially revised and an updated version was issued in June, 1998, as "Management of Internet Names and Addresses," known as the White Paper (published in 63 Fed. Reg. 31741-51 (June 10, 1998).

 The White Paper stated the U.S. Government's view that a new, non-profit corporation, rather than the U.S. Government "should establish minimum criteria for registrars that are pro-competitive and provide some measure of stability for Internet users without being so onerous as to prevent entry by would-be domain name registrars from around the world."

Subsequently, on November 25, 1998, the Department of Commerce entered into a Memorandum of Understanding/Joint Project Agreement with ICANN, under which the parties are jointly designing, developing, and testing the mechanisms, methods, and procedures necessary to transition management responsibility for DNS functions to the private sector.

Under the Joint Project Agreement, ICANN's responsibilities include the following: C.3 Collaborate on the design, development and testing of a plan for introduction of competition in domain name registration services, including:

a. Development of procedures to designate third parties to participate in tests conducted pursuant to this agreement.

b. Development of an accreditation procedure for registrars and procedures that subject registrars to consistent requirements designed to promote a stable and robustly competitive DNS, as set forth in the Statement of Policy.

Beginning in December, 1998, a staff-led working group developed this draft document for review and comment by interested parties and the Internet community at large.

The drafting process included the identification of goals and principles for registrar accreditation, a definition of the essential elements of accreditation, and the guidelines and requirements themselves.

You can register and renew domain names for terms of one to ten years.

Primary and Secondary servers are the two host computers on which a domain name is hosted.

No, www and http://www are not considered to be a part of your Domain name.

It is part of another type of internet address used on the World Wide Web called a Universal Resource Locator (URL).

A URL is used to describe the exact location of a specific resource on the Internet such as a specific web page, computer and database.

Therefore, "yourdomain.com" is a valid Web Address containing 12 characters, but www.yourdomain.com to http://www.yourdomain.com are not.

Letters and numbers are always valid characters in a Domain name.

Hyphens may also be used, but may not begin or end your Domain name.

Spaces and special characters, such as exclamation points(!) and underscores(_), are never permitted in Domain Names.

A Domain name can be upto 67 characters long including the four characters used to identify the top-level yourdomain.COM, .NET, .ORG or .EDU.