Operation
Some name registries are government departments (e.g., the registry for Sri Lanka nic.lk). Some are co-operatives of Internet service providers (such as DENIC) or not-for profit companies (such as Nominet UK). Others operate as commercial organizations, such as the US registry (nic.us).
The allocated and assigned domain names are made available by registries by use of the WHOIS system and via their Domain name servers.
Some registries sell the names directly (like SWITCH in Switzerland) and others rely on separate entities to sell them. For example, names in the .com TLD are in some sense sold "wholesale" at a regulated price by VeriSign, and individual domain name registrars sell names "retail" to businesses and consumers.
Read more about this topic: Domain Name Registry
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don’t have, at the back of your minds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)