History
Historical Context of the Delegation of the ccTLD .do to PUCMM
In 1991, the Organization of American States (OAS) carried out the project REDHUCYT (Inter-University Hemispheric Network of Scientific and Technological Information), whose mission was to connect the Member States of the organization to the Internet, in order to encourage the exchange of information from its academic and scientific institutions.
This project provided high-tech equipment, technical support and specialized training to network administrators and focused on supporting local initiatives for the creation or expansion of networks in the countries.
RedHUCyT sponsored several projects in the Hemisphere in coordination with local institutions and international agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Inter-American Development Bank. In addition to being a promoter of Internet development in Latin America and the Caribbean, through this project, in coordination with academic institutions, governments, telephone companies and the private sector, many of the first Internet presence of the region was created.
Within this context, the OAS / RedHUCyT, in collaboration with the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), created the Caribbean University Project (CUNet), a project designed to establish an academic, scientific, technological and research network linking universities in the Caribbean and allow the exchange of information of its members with the rest of the world.
CUNet was launched in September 1991 and its members were both public and private institutions from countries of the Caribbean, including: Jamaica; Trinidad & Tobago; Barbados; St. Lucia; Suriname; St. Vincent & Grenadines; Belize; Dominican Republic and Grenada.
During this first stage of the project, basic support was provided to Caribbean countries to implement their first nodes for e-mail exchange. The management of Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) in these countries began with the OAS RedHUCyT / CUNet Project in 1991.
Later in 1997, the project provided support and equipment to many educational institutions in the Caribbean to facilitate their access to the Internet and expand their information technology services, such is the case as the Dominican Republic that received the necessary equipment (routers, servers, etc.) for the development of the Backbone of the Dominican Academic and Scientific University Network (RUDAC), a project created in 1992 and whose main node and Executive Secretariat were in the PUCMM. This allowed that 5 educational institutions of the country could have access to Internet. The institutions benefited were:
- National Council of Higher Education
- Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra
- Technological Institute of Santo Domingo
- Autonomous University of Santo Domingo
- APEC University
About the Delegation of the .do
The Delegation of the Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) .do by Jon Postel / Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) occurred on August 25, 1991 during the first stage of CUNet. Since that date the .do was in custody of the University of Puerto Rico, in the hope of identifying who to delegate its administration in the country.
In 1995 the administration of the .do passed to the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, however, the operations related to the registration of domains were initially executed through the University of Puerto Rico.
In 1997, the infrastructure that allowed the operation of the .do in the country was established. In order to carry out these functions, the Network Information Center .do (NIC .DO), known internally as the Domain Registration Office, was created. This new entity is in charge of administration of the ccTLD .do and its basic function is to provide the services of information and registry of domain names for .do
With the definition of the first policies for the registration of domain names the operation of the .do formally initiates in the country.