NIRA Restates Commitment to Populate Nigeria’s Domain Name

Stories by Emma Okonji registered in the .ng registry till date, and encouraged Nigerians who are yet to register their business with .ng domain name, to do so without further delay.

Speaking about ‘Choosing Domain Names for Business and Media, during the training session, NIRA’s Vice President, Sunday Folayan, said domain name is made up of several levels, such as the first level domain name, which is premium, the second level domain name, the third level domain name, the fourth and fifth levels domain name, with each level separated by dots.

According to him, each level comes with its own specialities and pricing, advising Nigerians to register any level of domain name, except for the first level that is reserved.

He, however, said there were some domain names that are disallowed from registering, disclosing that NIRA reserves the right to maintain a list of domain names, and can withdraw them even if already registered.

He said offensive domain names are words in a domain name that are determined by NIRA to be offensive to the Nigerian community, and are therefore disallowed.

NIRA’ Board member, Mr. Biyi Oladipo, who presented a paper on ‘What is Domain Name System (DNS) as Business: An Overview’, described DNS as a hierarchically distributed naming system for computers, or any other resource connected to the internet or a private network, which serves as phone book that helps translate computer host names into the internet protocol (IP) addresses.

Presenting a paper on the ‘Role of the Media in Growing DNS Industry’, the Publisher of Political Economist, Mr. Ken Ugbechie, who was represented by Mr. Toyin Ogunseinde, described DNS as a system to map names to IP addresses for easy coordination. It is a technology that automatically relates names to the IP addresses, since the system does not recognise names, but IP address.

Speaking on the need to promote DNS to the public, Ugbechie said it would peserve personal unique digital identity and forestall domain name speculators, reduce the traffic load on the DNS servers on a global level, which means increased speed, and also address security concerns.

Other facilitators at the training who presented papers on various topics around domain name and domain name systems, include the Publisher of DigitalSense Magazine, Mr. Remmy Nweke; Legal Services and Board Matters Unit, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Emmanuel Edet; and NIRA Board member, Akinbo Cornerstone.