Today, CARNET celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Croatian national domain and its recognition in the global internet space.
The event was attended by the State Secretary of the Central State Office for Digital Society Development Bernard Gršić, CEO of Croatian Academic and Research Network – CARNET Goran Kezunović, CEO of the University Computing Center of the University of Zagreb Dr. Sc. Zoran Bekić, President of the .hr Domain Management Committee Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sc. Gordan Gledec, Doc. Dr. Sc. Predrag Pale from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, and the vice president of Srce Ivan Marić.
The sentence „Please go ahead with the new top-level domain HR for Croatia,“ addressed to Ivan Marić, today's Vice President of Srce, in 1993, marked the beginning of the formal recognition of the .hr domain, and the first registered domain was srce.hr. The number of domains has continuously grown since then, and currently, there are more than 100,800 registered. It is worth mentioning that the Republic of Croatia is the only European country offering the possibility of registering a free national domain for its citizens and legal entities, so the largest number of registered domains, more than 70 percent of them, are in fact free. Paid .hr domains can be registered through authorized registrars.
Compared to other top-level domains, the .hr domain is largely credible due to its sound management policy on user data accuracy, which is an important factor in doing business on the internet. “The national domain is an important national resource and requires constant attention in a technical and administrative sense,” said Assoc. Prof. Gordan Gledec, Ph.D., President of the .hr Domain Management Committee. „In the world of domains, including the .hr domain, it is extremely important that users keep track of domain data, and therefore I urge everyone to keep their contact data up to date in their domain, regardless of whether it is free or paid,” emphasized Vanja Radojević, head of the .hr Domain Register, adding that the goal is to introduce complete automation of registration, which is a prerequisite for linking all relevant registers.
By 2012, all administrative and technical activities related to the .hr domain were being carried out by the University Computing Center (SRCE) on behalf of CARNET. However, as of January 1, 2012, CARNET has taken over these responsibilities entirely. Online registration and updates for free domains have been introduced. Recent amendments to the Ordinance on the organization and management of the national top-level domain have made it possible to register domains that consist exclusively of numbers, domains with Croatian diacritical marks (č, ć, ž, đ, š), and domains composed of one or two alphanumeric characters. .
For more information on the .hr domain, go to: www.domene.hr