.РФ
.РФ is the IDN ccTLD for Russia. It is managed by the Coordination Center for TLD RU.[1]
The domain "рф" is represented in ASCII-compatible encoding according to the 2003 IDNA specification as “xn--p1ai”. The individual Unicode code points that comprise this string are U+0440 U+0444. In Russian language, the string has a meaning equivalent to “R.F.”, as an initialism for Российская Федерация (“Russian Federation” in English). The string is expressed using the Cyrillic script.[2]
Delegation History[edit | edit source]
Discussion concerning a Cyrillic country-code top-level domain for Russia started in earnest around 2008.
In November 2009, an application was made to the new "IDN Fast Track" process to have the string "рф" recognised as representing the Russian Federation. The Minister of Telecoms and Mass Communication of the Russian Federation supported the application, as well as a number of private bodies. The Deputy Director of the Institute for the Russian Language advised that the acronym was a “broadly used as a common equivalent to the proper noun” for the Russian Federation.
On 6 January 2010, review by the IDN Fast Track DNS Stability Panel found that “that the applied-for string associated with the fast track application ... presents none of the threats to the stability or security of the DNS ... and (b) presents an acceptably low risk of user confusion”. The request for the string to represent the country of the Russian Federation was subsequently approved.
On 25 January 2010, Coordination Center for TLD RU presented an application to ICANN for delegation of "рф" as a top-level domain, which was granted.[2]
.РФ was delegated officially on 12 March 2010, and immediately after the first Cyrillic addresses were launched.[3]
Rules and Restrictions[edit | edit source]
For general rules and restrictions, refer to the page for .ru.
Characters[edit | edit source]
A domain name must:
- consist of at least two characters;
- contain a number of characters that translates to no more than 63 Punycode characters;
- begin and end with a letter or a digit the Russian alphabet can be used, including the letter "ё"; uppercase and lowercase letters are not differentiated;
- not contain characters other than letters, numbers, and hyphens.[3]