.info sale now on

Net domain name .info is officially up for grabs after the sunrise period that allowed registered trademark owners to stake their claims closed.

Icann (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) called for the number of current generic top-level domains (gTLD) to be extended as .org, .net and .com were swamped by several years of popular registrations.

The new domains are the first to be assigned in 10 years.

The .info name was approved by Icann last year along with another six new domain names.

Last week Robert Connelly, founder and member of Afilias' board of directors, resigned claiming the company mismanaged sunrise period registrations and allowed many top-level domain names to become the property of cyber squatters.

Afilias, the .info registry, will not put all names on sale immediately as a rush of interest is expected.

Registrations are to be taken from randomly selected registrars during the first few days.

Certain country names have been reserved from general sale by Afilias under instruction from Icann following advise from a Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) communication.