Domain name registration

The right to use a domain name is delegated by domain name registrars which are accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization charged with overseeing the name and number systems of the Internet. In addition to ICANN, each top-level domain (TLD) is maintained and serviced technically by an administrative organization, operating a registry. A registry is responsible for maintaining the database of names registered within the TLD it administers. The registry receives registration information from each domain name registrar authorized to assign names in the corresponding TLD and publishes the information using a special service, the whois protocol.
ICANN publishes the complete list of TLD registries and domain name registrars. Registrant information associated with domain names is maintained in an online database accessible with the WHOIS service. For most of the more than 240 country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), the domain registries maintain the WHOIS (Registrant, name servers, expiration dates, etc.) information. For instance, DENIC, Germany NIC, holds the DE domain data. Since about 2001, most gTLD registries have adopted this so-called thick registry approach, i.e. keeping the WHOIS data in central registries instead of registrar databases.

For COM and NET domain names, a thin registry model is used: the domain registry (e.g. VeriSign) holds basic WHOIS (registrar and name servers, etc.) data. One can find the detailed WHOIS (registrant, name servers, expiry dates, etc.) at the registrars.
Some domain name registries, often called network information centers (NIC), also function as registrars to end-users. The major generic top-level domain registries, such as for the COM, NET, ORG, INFO domains, use a registry-registrar model consisting of many domain name registrars In this method of management, the registry only manages the domain name database and the relationship with the registrars. The registrants (users of a domain name) are customers of the registrar, in some cases through additional layers of resellers