Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

We have been receiving questions related to domain name registration from all over the world.

To save you (and us) some time, we have answered some of the common questions that were asked from us on this page.

Domains ending in .com (and some others) can be used by anyone, anywhere in the world. Domains ending in .lk are meant to identify organisations based in, or doing business in, Sri Lanka. You can register a name in either of (or both) these domains.

The .lk domain is administered by the LK Domain Registry. The day-to-day management of the domain database is handled by the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa.

If all the documents are available, the payment is received and there is no problem with the domain name, we expect to register a domain within three working days. However, if all goes well, we usually register a domain in one working day, though we can't guarantee this.

Please check our new price list.

The domain registration requests are manually updated to a database and then processed. If your request has been received and entered into the database, you can check the status of the domain at the search facility at our website. Please not that the actual addition to the database would take some time depending on local working times but they will be processed on a first come first served basis.

Currently we register domain names only for organisations (including businesses registered as sole proprietorships). However, we may accept requests from individuals in exceptional circumstances. Please contact us if you have need to register a domain for yourself.

Organisations outside Sri Lanka can reserve domains in the Sri Lankan Domain Registry but they cannot activate them (e.g., use them for e-mail or web sites) unless they have a presence in Sri Lanka. A presence may be a branch office, subsidiary, dealer, agent or representative which has established an office in Sri Lanka.

You can send in your payments by cheque, draft or international wire transfer in most major currencies at current conversion rates. Please contact us at hostmaster@nic.lk for information on making payments by wire transfer.

We need a letter from the organisation requesting the domain name (not the service provider), the domain registration template/request and of course the payment. Once all of these are received and if the domain is available and is falls within our guidelines, we will register the domain.

We try our best to do a good job and minimise the problems that might come to some one who has registered a domain name. We try our best to make sure that once a domain is assigned, it can be used without anyone else claiming that they have a right to that name.

LK Domain Registry or the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Moratuwa does not want to be legally liable if the domain is disputed. To indemnify our selves from this legal jumble we ask for a letter from the organisation requesting the domain to confirm to us that they have a right to that name.

We have a set of guidelines to decide on whether to accept or reject a domain. If the domain name requested does not fall within these guidelines, we will reject the domain.

If you think that we have made an error, then you can give further reasons for selecting the domain. These will be forwarded to a panel who will decide on the merits of the application. The guidelines have special restrictions on domain names that might be used for 2^nd-level domains in the future. These domains are reserved by the LK Domain Registry.

The NIC handle is currently not in use. This is similar to the NIC handle used by Internic. It may be implemented in the future and all the contact persons involved with a domain will be getting separate NIC handles from us in the future. Currently you can leave this blank. If you have a NIC handle from Internic, you can use it but we would prefer if you could fill in the rest of the contact information also so that it will minimize the amount of errors in looking up the NIC handle from Internic.