What does it matter whether you have a website address which goes www.xxx.in or www.xxx.com?

Well if Dayanidhi Maran, the Union minister of communications, is to be believed, those who love their country and want to promote it will have their website addresses that end with a .in (dot in) -- and at last count, about 4,000 odd-companies and individuals already have dotted in.

So if you are a patriot and believe that you can actually be a brand ambassador for the country by just affixing the .in to your website address then please read on. But before that, a little background.

Any domain registration will be authorised by the INRegistry, an autonomous body created under NIXI or the National Internet eXchange of India.

NIXI is a Not-for-Profit Company under Section 25 of the Indian Companies Act, 1956 with the onerous objective of improving internet-based services in the country.

The INRegistry is entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining the .IN ccTLD (TLD stands for top level domain) and looking into issues of operational stability, reliability, and security.

The era of the .IN registration began on January 1 this year with a sunrise period. The sunrise period, until January 21, meant that companies and owners of registered Indian trademarks or service marks who wished to protect their trademarks have been given the opportunity to apply for .in domain names before the general public.

This meant that this class of people could register their .in domain names without having to worry about any cyber squatter applying for the same and then go through the ensuing hassle of trying to evict them.

According to Dipak Maheswari, secretary of the Internet Service Providers Association of India, the demand ever since registrations have been opened has been good.

The date for the opening of real-time, open registration for the general public is going to open from February 16, 2005.

The creation of INRegistry has meant that it has the sole responsibility for the registry from the previous registry authority, the National Centre for Software Technology and its unit, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing.

This change was announced through an executive order through a gazette notification issued by the Department of Information Technology, Government of India, according a legal status to the INRegistry.

This announcement also mentioned the role of the National Informatics Centre as the registrar for gov.in domains, ERNET as the registrar for res.in and ac.in domains, and the Ministry of Defence as the registrar for mil.in domains.

Importantly, the INRegistry does not physically carry out registrations but does so through accredited registrars through an open process of selection and, according to its website, on the basis of transparent eligibility criteria.

Afilias India, a subsidiary of Afilias Limited, serves as the registry services provider to NIXI.

So if you think that you do need a .in domain name to your website, here is the list of accredited registrars from www.inregistry.in. The following registrars are fully accredited, and are authorised to register .IN domain names beginning February 16, 2005 -- DirectI, GoodLuckDomains, InCyber Advertising, Netandhost.com (S.G.S.Technologie Pvt Ltd), Net4India Ltd, OnlineNIC and Silicon House.

The following registrars are required to pass operational testing and are not yet allowed to register domains in the open registration period beginning February 16 2005 -- IP Mirror and Sify Ltd.

This apart according to www.inregistry.in as of January 1, 2005 the following had the sole rights to register these domain names.  gov.in: National Informatics Centre (NIC) is the exclusive registrar for gov.in domain names and ac.in, edu.in, res.in: ERNET is the exclusive registrar for ac.in, edu.in, and res.in domain names.

And the registration comes cheap. All thanks to the government being on an overdrive to encourage more companies and individuals to migrate to the .in domain.

The INRegistry charges Rs 500 for www.xxx.in registration and Rs 250 for a www.xxx.co.in address. But since you (the registrant) would have to go through one of the accredited registrars it would cost you anywhere between Rs 400 and Rs 450 for a www.xxx.co.in address and between Rs 800 and Rs 850 for a www.xxx.in address.

These prices hold good only for an year and if the rush is anything to go by, expect an uptick in prices.