.net domain names: who runs it and who can register

The IANA delegation record names VeriSign Global Registry Services as the sponsoring organisation for .net. Under the current .net Registry Agreement with ICANN, dated 1 July 2023, the contracted registry operator is Verisign, Inc., a publicly traded company. Verisign runs its own technical backend for .net too, rather than farming it out to a third party. It manages the shared registry infrastructure directly, the same setup it uses for .com.

Three distinct roles sit behind every .net domain, and it pays to know the difference. The registry, Verisign, holds the master database for the whole .net zone, sets wholesale pricing within the limits of its ICANN agreement, and operates the name servers listed in the IANA record. The registrar is whichever accredited company sold you the domain, EuroDNS or one of the other ICANN-accredited sellers, and that's who handles billing, WHOIS contact details and support tickets. The registrant is you: the person or organisation named on the registration, holding the rights to use it and renew it.

ICANN sits above all of this as the policy authority. It sets the rules Verisign has to follow under the Registry Agreement, covering pricing terms and consumer protections such as how transfers and expirations are handled.

.net has no registrant eligibility restrictions whatsoever. Anyone can register one, individuals and organisations worldwide, and the only formal requirement is valid WHOIS contact data at the point of registration, per EuroDNS's registration details. You don't need to run a network or an ISP to get one, despite what the name suggests.

This rule sits at the registry level, set by Verisign's ICANN agreement, so it applies no matter which registrar you buy through. Registrars can bolt on their own requirements, account verification, specific payment currencies, privacy protection as a paid extra, but that's registrar policy, not .net registry policy.

Names must fall between 2 and 63 characters under EuroDNS's stated format rules. Letters, numbers and mid-string hyphens are fine, and internationalised domain name (IDN) characters are supported too. Still worth checking your registrar's own terms before you buy, since the registry only sets the floor and registrars are free to stack extra conditions on top.

Transferring a .net follows the usual ICANN inter-registrar routine: pull an authorisation code (still called an EPP code by old habit) from your current registrar, then confirm the move with whoever's taking it over. Same as any other gTLD, a registry-level lock kicks in for 60 days after first registration, after a transfer, or after certain registrant changes. Your registrar might also bolt on its own separate lock, which you can usually switch off yourself. Details in ICANN's Transfer Policy.

Registration terms run from a 1-year minimum up to 10 years, renewed a year at a time, per registrar-published pricing pages (Europe Registry, EuroDNS). ICANN's Expired Registration Recovery Policy mandates a post-expiry renewal window, and for non-sponsored gTLDs like .net, a 30-day Redemption Grace Period follows, during which a deleted name can still be clawed back, see ICANN's ERRP. After that there's a brief pending-delete stretch before the name finally drops. Nothing in the official documentation sets a .net-specific restore fee. The numbers floating around for the sibling .com registry aren't confirmed to carry over here, so don't assume anything, check your registrar's redemption cost before you let a name lapse. Worth flagging too: Verisign has confirmed a wholesale price rise for .net landing 1 March 2027, which will work its way into renewal pricing across every registrar, see Domain Name Wire.