.IL is the national country code top level domain for Israeli domain names (ccTLD). The .IL TLD has been active since October 1985 and is administered by ISOC, the Israel Internet Association. The current number of .il domain names registered in ISOC is over 220,000.
Established in 2000, Domain The Net was the first company to be accredited by ISOC as a registrar for .co.il and .org.il domain names. Today the leading domain name registrar in the Israeli market, Domain The Net, an ICANN accredited registrar, provides on-line registration services for domain names in over 270 countries and over 1000 extensions.
Let my CO.IL GO!
Domain names ending with .org.il or .co.il registered pre 1999 may have no expiration date, as they may not be registered according to ISOC`s latest regulations.
ISOC is now initiating a move to locate domain names that have been assigned before 1999 and are no longer in use, in order to release thousands of these domain names to public`s use, or set them up to date with ISOC`s latest regulations.
As a result of the process, many attractive domain names that have been taken since the early years of .il will be released back into the market.For more information see ISOC`s link: http://www.1999.co.il/
Eight second level domains exist under the .IL TLD:
co.il - primarily intended for entities operating for profit.
Registration of co.il domain names is also possible in Punycode, e.g. דומיין.co.il
org.il - primarily intended for nonprofit organizations.
net.il – for internet service providers (ISPs) with a special, valid, license to provide Internet access, provided from the Israeli Ministry of Communications.
ac.il - academic institutions of higher education, domains will only be registered if approved by the Council of Higher Education.
gov.il - Governmental entities of the State of Israel.
idf.il - bodies of the IDF. Under this extension will be allocated only Domain Names authorized by the IDF Central Computing (MAMRAM).
k12.il - kindergartens and schools as classified by the Ministry of Education. The allocation under the suffix .K12.IL fourth level is done as follows:
[Name of institution]. [Town] .K12.IL.
muni.il - for municipal and local government authorities.
Some notable registration restrictions for .il domain names:
A Latin domain name will consist only of Latin characters, the numbers "0" to "9", and hyphens (the minus character "-").
A Hebrew domain name will consist only of Hebrew characters, the numbers "0" to "9", and hyphens (the minus character "-").
A domain name will not contain two consecutive hyphens ("--") nor begin or end with a hyphen, the exception being Punycode version of Hebrew domain names only ("xn--").
The minimum number of characters for a Latin domain name is 3, for a Hebrew domain name the minimum is 2, the maximum for either is 63.
The domain name cannot be the string "www" and cannot be the same as an existing Top Level Domain e.g. com.co.il, this rule does not apply to the list of new TLDs.
A Punycode domain name may not begin with a number.