NEW DELHI: As India Inc. moves towards .IN domain name era, the National Internet exchange of India (NIXI) is planning to have more than 40 registrars within a period of three to four months.

At present, there are only four registrars, DirectI, GoodLuckDomains, Net4India Ltd, OnlineNIC, working towards registering .IN domain names in this region. "More and more companies in this region are likely to go for .IN domain name registration and that's why we want to increase the number of registrars offering this service. Ideally, we are looking at around 40 registrars within a period of three to four months. Chennai based Sify has also joined in as one of the registrars over here. We are also looking for registrars outside India as a number of people in the global market will be interested in getting a .IN domain name," explained NIXI advisor, Jatinder Kumar.

In order to provide information about obtaining the status of a registrar, NIXI has posted guidelines for the same at its Website www.nixi.org and a non-refundable fee of Rs 50,000 is being charged for obtaining the registrar status. "There is a review committee which screens each and every application that we receive. We have listed all the required criteria on the Website and the committee decides on awarding the registrar status to a company based on these guidelines," Kumar further informed.

With the .IN domain initiative in place, NIXI is aiming high. "Our objective is to route most of the five million Internet connections or roughly about 20 million traffic within India itself," he added.

The payments collected from this domain name registration exercise are being accumulated in an ICICI bank account, which is being operated by four key people (two on behalf of the government and industry respectively) associated with this initiative.

To strengthen the .IN domain name registration, four Internet Exchange Nodes have been set up and are functional at Noida (Delhi), Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata in the premises of the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI). As many as 34 ISPs, including many class-A ISPs have joined these nodes as members. Moreover, the zones for government, military and educational institutions will be reserved for exclusive use by the respective organizations.

Moving forward, registrations for these will be offered by NIC, an organization nominated by the Ministry of Defense, and ERNET, respectively. In order to address the problem of excessive cost of connectivity for smaller ISPs (Class B and C) operating in secondary cities, the Government is also considering a proposal to set up in partnership with the state governments and with the ISPs as stake holders, a second tier of NIXI hubs in a few selected provincial capitals.