.ca

Top-level Internet domain for Canada August 2023 .ca Logo_of_.ca_domains_by_CIRA.png 240px CIRA — Canadian Internet Registration Authority 1987 5 14 Country code top-level domain Active Canadian Internet Registration Authority Government of Canada Entities connected with Canada Popular in Canada, where .ca is advantageous when selling to a Canadian audience in Canadian dollars. 3,383,905 4 September 2024 4 September 2024 Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) https://www.cira.ca/#block-sitefootercontent3rdcolumn live https://web.archive.org/web/20221211224727/https://www.cira.ca/#block-sitefootercontent3rdcolumn 2022-12-11 4 September 2024 Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) There are Canadian presence requirements for registrants Provincially registered companies originally had to register at third level under province code, but now anybody may register at second level Official CIRA documents CIRA Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (CDRP) CIRA Yeshttp://cira.ca/content/dnssec-securing-domain-name-system DNSSEC: Securing the domain name system Canadian Internet Registration Authority 2015-11-13 https://web.archive.org/web/20151117025355/http://cira.ca/content/dnssec-securing-domain-name-system 2015-11-17 dead dmy-all .ca is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Canada. The domain name registry that operates it is the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA).June 21, 2024 Everything you need to know about .CA domains https://www.chamber.ca/everything-you-need-to-know-about-ca-domains/ www.chamber.ca en-CA Canadian Chamber of Commerce February 27, 2025 Registrants can register domains at the second level (e.g., example.ca). Third-level registrations in one of the geographic third-level domains defined by the registry (e.g. example.ab.ca) were discontinued on October 12, 2010,2010-10-12 .CA FAQ — October 12, 2010 https://www.cira.ca/ca-faq-10-12 dead https://web.archive.org/web/20101107202206/http://cira.ca:80/ca-faq-10-12/ 2010-11-07 Canadian Internet Registration Authority dmy-all but existing third-level domain names continue to be supported. Canadian Presence Requirements Registrants of .ca domains must meet the Canadian Presence Requirementshttp://www.cira.ca/assets/Documents/Legal/Registrants/CPR.pdf Canadian Presence Requirements for Registrants Canadian Internet Registration Authority 2010-10-20 dmy-all as defined by the registry. Examples of valid entities include: a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of the age of majority a legally recognized Canadian organization an Inuit, First Nation, Métis or other people indigenous to Canada an Indian Band as defined in the Indian Act of Canada a foreign resident of Canada that holds a registered Canadian trademark an executor, administrator or other legal representative of a person or organization that meets the requirements a division of the government the monarch of Canada History Canadian Internet Registration Authority The domain name was originally allocated by Jon Postel, operator of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), to John Demco of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1987. The first .ca domain was registered by the University of Prince Edward Island in January 1988.https://www.cira.ca/about-cira/history/ History Canadian Internet Registration Authority 2013-08-28 https://web.archive.org/web/20130901180821/http://www.cira.ca/about-cira/history/ 2013-09-01 dead dmy-all In 1997, at the Canadian annual Internet conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Canadian Internet community, with a view to liberalize registration procedures and substantially improve turnaround times, decided to undertake reform of the .ca Registry. The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is a non-profit Canadian corporation that is responsible for operating the .ca Internet country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) today. It assumed operation of the .ca ccTLD on December 1, 2000, from UBC. On April 15, 2008, CIRA registered its one millionth .ca Internet domain name.https://www.cira.ca/canada-hits-one-million-dot-ca-ca-internet-addresses/ Canada Hits One Million Dot-Ca (.ca) Internet Addresses Ottawa Canadian Internet Registration Authority 2008-04-15 2010-10-20 https://web.archive.org/web/20100921105607/http://cira.ca/canada-hits-one-million-dot-ca-ca-internet-addresses 2010-09-21 dead dmy-all Any .ca registration has to be ordered via a certified registrar. Third-level (provincial) and fourth-level (municipal) domains ISO 3166-2:CA UBC's registry operations once favoured fourth-level names (such as city.toronto.on.ca) for purely local entities or third-level names for entities operating solely within one province. Nationally incorporated companies could have a .ca domain, while provincially incorporated companies required the letters of their province, like .mb.ca. Only an entity with presence in two or more provinces was typically registered directly under .ca; this complex structure (and the long delays in getting .ca registration) caused many Canadian entities to favour the .com, .org and .net registrations, despite the then-higher cost. June 2014 Currently, any of the above listed parties can register a domain with a name of their choosing followed directly by .ca. CIRA stopped accepting new registrations for third-level domains on October 12, 2010, citing complexity and the low number of new third domain registration as the reason for the change. As a result, the following domains at the third-level are no longer available for registration: DomainProvince/Territory.ab.caAlberta.bc.caBritish Columbia.mb.caManitoba.nb.caNew Brunswick.nf.caNewfoundland.nl.caNewfoundland and Labrador.ns.caNova Scotia.nt.caNorthwest Territories.nu.caNunavut.on.caOntario.pe.caPrince Edward Island.qc.caQuebec.sk.caSaskatchewan.yk.caYukon The second-level domain name '.gc.ca' (Government of Canada) is commonly mistaken as one of the regional domains under which CIRA will allow Government of Canada registrations.April 2026 gc.ca is actually a standard domain like all other .ca domain names. CIRA does not register domain names under .gc.ca directly. The .mil.ca second-level domain name is also a standard domain and is registered to the Department of National Defence (DND). The .mil.ca suffix is used internally by DND on its intranet, the Defence Information Network (DIN) or Defence Wide Area Network (DWAN), to distinguish intranet-only websites. Naming restrictions Internationalized domain names (IDN) were introduced in January 2013 with a limited selection of characters (é, ë, ê, è, â, à, æ, ô, œ, ù, û, ü, ç, î, ï, ÿ) to allow French language text with diacritics.http://www.cira.ca/news/news-releases/ca-french/ CA takes on a French accent CIRA 2013-01-14 2013-03-29 https://web.archive.org/web/20130329202451/http://cira.ca/news/news-releases/ca-french/ 2013-03-29 dead dmy-all Names which differ only in diacritical accents (such as metro.ca and métro.ca) must have the same owner and same registrar.http://www.cira.ca/why-ca/french-ca/ Register a .CA in French CIRA 2013-03-29 https://web.archive.org/web/20130328203849/http://www.cira.ca/why-ca/french-ca/ 2013-03-28 dead dmy-all Domain names that begin with the four characters xn-- are otherwise not available for registration. Length must be 2-63 characters, including the xn-- prefix encoding for internationalized domain names. Names which match the name of an existing generic three-letter top level domain (such as .com.ca) or the Canadian top level country code (.ca) are reserved and therefore not available for new registrations. Certain expletives are not accepted as names. Municipal names of individual cities and localities within Canada are also reserved nationwide, along with village.ca, hamlet.ca, town.ca, city.ca, ville.ca and the names of Canadian provinces.http://www.cira.ca/assets/Documents/Legal/Registrants/registrationrules.pdf Registration rules CIRA 2013-03-29 dmy-all 2013-05-09 https://web.archive.org/web/20130509021746/http://www.cira.ca/assets/Documents/Legal/Registrants/registrationrules.pdf dead There are a handful of existing .ca registered names as short as two characters in length, but these tend to be rare as two-letter combinations matching any existing country-code TLDs were reserved in the past. Exceptions were typically names registered before the restriction was introduced, such as the Canadian Governor General at gg.ca. Names which exist at any of the levels (.ca, an individual province or territory, or an individual city) are blocked in their availability elsewhere in the .ca hierarchy. Registration, if it can be done at all, requires manual intervention by the prospective registrar as the permission of all existing registrant(s) must be obtained by CIRA.http://www.cira.ca/legal/cdrp/ Registration Of Conflicting Domain Names 2018-11-29 https://web.archive.org/web/20160322235204/https://cira.ca/legal/cdrp 2016-03-22 dead dmy-all For instance, if the province of New Brunswick were to want to register "gouv.nb.ca",Its current website is at gnb.ca and does not use subdomains. CIRA's normal automated WHOIS and registration tools would simply return the following error: The domain name provided conflicts with at least one other registered domain name (e.g. xyz.ca conflicts with xyz.on.ca). Registering this domain name requires permission from the Registrant(s) that already holds the domain name(s): gouv.on.ca, gouv.pe.ca, gouv.qc.ca. Contact CIRA for more information. Since Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec already use "gouv" on their provincial second-level domains for the French-language versions of their government websites, this domain is unavailable through the normal registration process. However, with the agreement of these three parties New Brunswick would indeed be able to register and use gouv.nb.ca. Existing third-level domain registrants looking to obtain the corresponding second-level domain are normally advised to use the same initial registrar for both names. Expired domains After a thirty-day redemption period, intended to provide the original registrant one final chance to reclaim a suspended name, the expired names are assigned a to-be-released (TBR) status. These names are made available through a weekly auction process, in which lists of available names are posted onlinehttp://tbr.cira.ca/ CIRA TBR process 2013-10-02 2013-10-04 https://web.archive.org/web/20131004224051/http://tbr.cira.ca/ dead and advance bids are placed by prospective registrants through the various .ca registrars. Domains which receive no bids are then released and made openly available for new registrations. See also Canada .quebec Internet in Canada Canadian Internet Registration Authority ca.gov (California) References External links IANA .ca whois information CIRA - The Canadian Internet Registration Authority List of .ca certified registrars Internet in Category:1987 establishments in Canada Category:Country code top-level domains Category:Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries members Category:Internet properties established in 1987 he:סיומת אינטרנט#טבלת סיומות המדינות sv:Toppdomän#C