| Introduced | 1997 |
|---|---|
| TLD type | Country code top-level domain |
| Status | Active |
| Registry | .NU Domain Ltd |
| Sponsor | Internet Users Society - Niue |
| Intended use | Entities connected with Niue |
| Actual use | Used for a multitude of sites all over, few with any connection to Niue; especially popular in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Belgium since "nu" is Swedish, Danish and Dutch for "now" |
| Registration restrictions | None |
| Structure | Registrations permitted at second level |
| Documents | Terms and conditions |
| Dispute policies | UDRP |
| Website | NuNames |
| DNSSEC | yes |
.nu is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to the island state of Niue. It was one of the first ccTLDs to be marketed to the Internet at large as an alternative to the gTLDs .com, .net, and .org. Playing on the phonetic similarity between nu and new, it was promoted as a "new" TLD in which there was an abundance of good domain names available.
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The IUSN Foundation[1] (formerly 'Internet Users Society - Niue') administers the TLD in order to provide a number of local services for Niue itself. IUSN funds Internet Niue[2] which provides the island's internet connection; complimentary PCs and internet connectivity for all residents; and in 2003 established free use WiFi hotspots at various locations throughout the country, claiming to be the "first WiFi nation".[3].
The .nu domain is particularly popular in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium, as nu is the word for "now" in Swedish, Danish and Dutch.[4] Partially owing to restrictive domain rules for the ccTLD assigned to Sweden, .se, .nu was used for creative marketing of websites such as www.tv.nu.
In March 2000, .NU Domain Ltd became the first TLD to offer registration of Internationalized domain names,[5] supporting the full Unicode character set.[6] Unlike other TLDs, no browser plugin or punycode capable browser was required on the client side for use of these names, as .NU Domain's web servers converted and redirected any web queries issued in a variety of international character encodings. However, in March 2010, .NU Domain announced at ICANN that they had recently disabled their general wildcard domain name resolution technology, and thus were implementing IDNs only by the now standard punycode implemention, and were reducing the accepted set of IDN characters for .NU Domain names to a subset of the ISO-8859-1 western European characters.[7]
.NU domain names are revoked without refund for displaying child porn, being involved with phishing, spamming, email theft, search engine abuse, or any unlawful purpose.[8] Various domains such as vous.nu and por.nu return "THIS DOMAIN NAME HAS BEEN REVOKED BY .NU DOMAIN"[9] and are not available for registration on .NUdomains' site.[10]
Domain names can be as short as one character. A premium of €500/yr applies to name registrations of one character in length, €250 for domain names of two-character length, and €30 per year for domain names of any other length, although alternate registrars have two-letter domain names available for the price of normal length names. In June, 2008, .NU Domain began permitting registration of all-numeric domain names.[11]
A 2005 UDRP case regarding nudomain.com[12] made the assertion under "Factual background" that "The Complainants [WorldNames, Inc. and NU Domain Ltd] own and operate the .NU ccTLD". The companies in question are operating the registry for .nu on behalf of the Internet Users Society, but it is incorrect to state that they "own" the TLD, as TLDs in general are delegated and managed rather than "owned".[13][14] The case does, however, point out that these companies own a registered trademark to ".nudomain" in several countries.
In March 2007, McAfee SiteAdvisor issued a report explaining the functionality of SiteAdvisor. As part of that report, .nu domain websites were stated to be among the highest-risk TLDs for browser exploits. However, in most other respects, .nu sites were ranked overall as a low to moderate risk.[15] Shortly thereafter, .NU Domain issued a press release stating that SiteAdvisor had ranked .nu sites among the lowest for risk.[16] In 2008 McAfee reported that .net and .com had become the riskiest TLDs.[17]