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Support - Domain Name Registration

You should be comfortable with your domain name selection. A request to change your domain name after the account has been activated is subject to another set up fee. Our set up fee is separate from the InterNIC's domain registration fee. The InterNIC charges $70 to register a domain name which covers the first two years. They currently bill at a rate of $35/year thereafter. The InterNIC will send you an invoice approximately 3-weeks to 1-1/2 months after domain registration. Crowder Associates will not bill you for the InterNIC's fees.

Valid Domain Names

• 26 character maximum including the 4 characters used to identify the top-level domain such as .COM, .NET, .ORG, .EDU, .GOV
• may contain letters, digits, and a dash ("-")
• cannot begin or end with a dash

Selecting Top-Level Domains

Please note that the InterNIC makes the following top-level domain reservations:

• COM - commercial entities (or individual usage)
• EDU - 4 year colleges and universities
• NET - internet providers
• ORG - registered non-profit organizations

If you wish to register a top-level domain other than a COM domain, the InterNIC may require explanation as to why the domain meets the criteria outlined below. If you are not prepared to provide information which substantiates your request, you may need to register a COM domain.

Crowder Associates can also serve non-US domains, but registration must be handled by the end user.

Criteria for Top-Level Domains

The following is an extract from RFC1591 listing top-level domains.

   World Wide Generic Domains:

   COM - This domain is intended for commercial entities, that is
         companies.  This domain has grown very large and there is
         concern about the administrative load and system performance if
         the current growth pattern is continued.  Consideration is
         being taken to subdivide the COM domain and only allow future
         commercial registrations in the subdomains.

   EDU - This domain was originally intended for all educational
         institutions.  Many Universities, colleges, schools,
         educational service organizations, and educational consortia
         have registered here.  More recently a decision has been taken
         to limit further registrations to 4 year colleges and
         universities.  Schools and 2-year colleges will be registered
         in the country domains (see US Domain, especially K12 and CC,
         below).

   NET - This domain is intended to hold only the computers of network
         providers, that is the NIC and NOC computers, the
         administrative computers, and the network node computers.  The
         customers of the network provider would have domain names of
         their own (not in the NET TLD).

   ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for
         organizations that didn't fit anywhere else.  Some non-
         government organizations may fit here.


   United States Only Generic Domains:

   GOV - This domain was originally intended for any kind of government
         office or agency.  More recently a decision was taken to
         register only agencies of the US Federal government in this
         domain.  State and local agencies are registered in the country
         domains (see US Domain, below).

   MIL - This domain is used by the US military.


   Example country code Domain: (must be registered by end user)

   US  - As an example of a country domain, the US domain provides for
         the registration of all kinds of entities in the United States
         on the basis of political geography, that is, a hierarchy of
         <entity-name>.<locality>.<state-code>.US. For example, 
         "IBM.Armonk.NY.US".  In addition, branches of the 
         US domain are provided within each state for schools (K12), 
         community colleges (CC), technical schools (TEC), state 
         governement agencies (STATE), councils of governments (COG), 
	 libraries (LIB), museums (MUS), and several other generic
         types of entities (see RFC 1480 for details [1]).