EPP automates many .AI transactions people take for granted with other domains.
Anguilla’s country code domain name .AI has become popular in recent years thanks to artificial intelligence companies. Now the domain has a bit of intelligence itself.
The domain name registry has moved to the Council of Country Code Administrators (CoCCA) platform, which means that many transactions that were previously manual can be achieved using Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP).
Previously, registrars had to perform transactions on a .AI web page. Many updates were handled manually by the registry, which is managed by one person on the tiny island of 15,000 people. Nameserver updates were performed once a day on weekdays, for example.
And if a hurricane hit the island, all bets were off.
Moving to CoCCA might also give the registry more resiliency in its DNS infrastructure.
As part of the move to CoCCA, individuals can no longer register domains directly through the registry. Since many registrars already offer domains on CoCCA, you can expect more to start offering .AI domain names for sale. One such registrar that recently added .AI is Hexonet (1api). A full list of supporting registrars is here.
Domain names can be transferred between registrars. However, there is a transfer fee equal to a new registration that does not add years to the registration. So it’s unlikely people will transfer registrars to get lower registration fees.
The wholesale cost of a .AI domain is $100 for two years.
Joseph Peterson says
Good news for anybody who uses (or might want to use) .AI.