Issued in Helsinki on 8 August 2006
The Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (FICORA) has, under section 4 (1) and section 4 a (2) of the Domain Name Act of 13 March 2003 (228/2003), as written in the Act (187/2006), prescribed as follows:
Scope of application
This Regulation shall apply to Internet domain names ending in country code top-level domain .fi.
Name servers
At least two and at the most ten, of one another independent, name servers shall be configured to serve the domain name. The domain name must be configured to all name servers in accordance with this regulation, and it must be possible to reach them by the Internet. It must also be possible to verify the configurations by automatic name server requests made by the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority.
The name servers shall be equipped with NS records (Name Server) having information on all name servers configured to serve the domain name. The NS records shall point to servers, for which an A record (IP Address) has been configured in name service.
FICORA 37 E/2006 M
E-mail connections
To equip the name servers with the MX-records (Mail Exchanger) of the domain name is voluntary. If the name servers are equipped with the MX records of the domain name, the MX records must point to servers, for which an A record (IP Address) has been configured in name service. Also the e-mail systems in the servers shall then be configured to receive e-mail sent to the domain name.
SOA record
The SOA record (Start of Authority) that defines the configuration of the name server of the domain name shall comply with the following:
1) the MNAME (Master Name) field shall contain the name of the primary name server of the domain name;
2) the RNAME (Responsible Name) field shall contain a working e-mail address that belongs to the administrator of the name servers; and
3) the serial numbers and timers cannot differ essentially from published Internet standards and recommendations.
Domain name length and permitted characters
A domain name can contain a maximum of 63 characters.
The ones permitted for a domain name are the letters a to z, numbers 0 to 9 and a hyphen-minus (-) and the following national characters:
FICORA 37 E/2006 M
A domain name must not begin or end with a hyphen-minus. Hyphen-minuses cannot be used simultaneously as the third and the fourth character of the domain name. However, hyphen-minuses may be used simultaneously as the third and the fourth character in ACE format (ASCII Compatible Encoding) of a domain name containing national characters.
Entry into force
This regulation enters into force on 14 August 2006 and will remain in force until further notice.
This Regulation repeals the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority’s Regulation of 23 March 2006 on the technical configurations and permitted characters for Finnish domain names (FICORA 37 D/2006 M).
Information and publication
This Regulation is included in the Series of Regulations issued by the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority and it can be obtained from the FICORA Customer Service Office:
Visiting address Itämerenkatu 3 A, HELSINKI
FICORA 37 E/2006 M
Postal address P.O. Box 313 FI-00181 HELSINKI Tel. national (09) 6966 500 Tel. international +358 9 6966 500 Fax national (09) 6966 410 Fax international +358 9 6966 410 Website http://www.ficora.fi/ Business identification code 0709019-2
Helsinki 8 August 2006
On behalf of Director-General
Director Tapani Rantanen
Director Timo Lehtimäki