NIC.ac

Type:	Privately held
Industry:	Internet
Founded:	1997
Headquarters:	ICB Plc.9 Queens Road Bournemouth Dorset BH2 6B
Country:	UK
Employees:	100
Website:	Nic.ac
Key People
Paul Kane, Manager

Nic.ac is the registry for the country code top-level domain name .ac, of the Ascension Islands. It is a subsidiary of the Internet Computer Bureau. Paul Kane is the manager of the registry.

The company is based in United Kingdom and it has offices in the United States and Japan. NIC.ac servers are located in Amsterdam, London, Melbourne, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo.

Usage

Due to its similarly with the .ac ("academic") second-level domain, a number of global academic institutions register their sites with .ac, such as Ralston College in Savannah, GA, USA (http://www.ralston.ac) and University of Oxford (http://www.oxford.ac), which utilizes the ccTLD for redirect purposes.

In 2013, after its .sx domain was seized, The Pirate Bay temporarily relocated its site to thepiratebay.ac.

Nic.ac names accept IDN Code Point Policy, which means that IDN names, for example 상표.ac, can be registered and used.

Registrars

Nic.ac offers domain name registration, management, and renewal. .ac is an Open ccTLD, and thus, registration of .ac domain name is open for everyone and it is offered internationally by its accredited registrars worldwide which include Instra Corporation, Melbourne IT, French Connexion, INDOM, Key-Systems GmbH, Asadal Domain Center, Nominalia, IP Mirror Pte Ltd, CyberQuest UK etc.

NIC.ac and ICANN

Nic.ac, through its manager Paul Kane, was one of the CENTR members that supported ICANN to improve the services of IANA. One of the projects nic.ac supported was the automation project called e-IANA endorsed by ccTLD registries around the world that would improve the efficiency of the IANA service to the Registry Community.

Recently, Paul Kane was the only representative from the United Kingdom chosen by ICANN to serve as a Trusted Community Representative responsible for safe-guarding a share of the Root Zone's DNSSEC Recovery Key.