.at

.at is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Austria. It is administered by nic.at.

Rules

In general, .at domains can be registered by anyone, regardless of whether the registering party is a private individual, a company, association or organisation. The domain holder indicated must be either a natural person or an organisation (legal entity). An organisation must be specified with its full and valid legal form.

Since registration of a .at domain name is the conclusion of a contract with nic.at, private individuals must be of full legal age and capable of entering into binding contracts. The first and last name of domain holders who are natural persons must be entered into the name field. Umlauts cannot be used in domain holder data.

Organisations with their own legal personality (e.g. OG, GmbH, associations, etc.) must be specified in the organisation field - giving with their complete name and including any specification of legal form. If the name field (optional) also indicates a person, this person will merely be considered a contact person, but not a domain holder.

For organisations without their own legal personality, a natural person who is also the domain holder must be specified additionally in the name field. (Example: The organisation is Boarding House Sample and the name field says Sam Sample. This means Sam Sample is the domain holder, provided that Boarding House Sample does not have its own legal personality).

Reservations

Domains below ".ac.at" (academic) are reserved for universities and schools and can be registered at the Austrian Academic Computer Network ACOnet. ".gv.at" is for governmental use and can be registered via the Federal Chancellery Republic of Austria.

Registration

As a rule, .at domains are registered by an Internet service provider, because they can also provide the customer with technical services and additional services (such as e-mail, web space, etc.) that nic.at doesn't offer. If a person merely wants to register the domain and requires no additional services, a .at domain can be registered directly via nic.at. In this event, one will require at least two correctly configured name servers at registration, because nic.at does not offer technical services. Ordinarily, new registrations are completed in a matter of minutes.

Characters and IDNs

Domain names under .at, co.at, and .or.at must contain at least one character and may be no more than 63 characters long.

A valid domain name may contain letters ("a-z"), numbers ("0-9"), hyphens ("-"), and Internationalized Domain Name IDN characters. The name must not start or end with a hyphen. Also, for technical reasons, a domain name must not contain two hyphens at the third and fourth position. The accepted characters can be seen at this table.