ds

.ac

Country-code top-level domain for Ascension Island

WHOISsold by 3 registrars

Register
$51.84first year
Renew
$69.04a year
Transfer
$58.71to move it
Registrars
3quoting it
Lookup
WHOISanswers for it
DNSSEC
Signed1 DS record in the root
Level
Secondmybrand.ac

Check a name

One command, straight against the registry — no account, no page to load.

Fills the command and the registrar links below in with your own name. The page is static — nothing is looked up here, and nothing you type leaves the browser.

ds mybrand --tld ac

Add --where for the registrars and the registry's rules, --registry for the server that answered, or --all-info for everything at once.

What it costs

Every published quote in the bundled table, cheapest registration first. The figure ds prints beside .ac is the mean of the registration column — $51.84, which undercuts 35% of the 881 priced TLDs.

RegistrarRegisterRenewTransfer
porkbun.comcheapest$26.06$46.65$46.65
namecheap.com$62.98$76.98$62.98
101domain.com$66.49$83.49$66.49
Mean — what ds prints$51.84$69.04$58.71

List prices in US dollars, bundled with the binary and last regenerated 2026-09-09. Promotions, ICANN fees, taxes and premium names all move the real number, and a registry may decline to sell you the name at all. See Prices.

Where to register

3 registrars in the bundled table publish a registration price for .ac, which is evidence they sell it — nobody prices what they cannot sell. Cheapest first, exactly as ds mybrand --tld ac --where prints them.

Put a name in the box above and each link becomes that registrar's search for mybrand.ac, where it publishes one. This list is what the price table knows, not the whole market — see Where to register.

Who can register

No eligibility rule is on file for .ac, which is not the same as a promise that it is open: the list is hand-maintained and covers the restricted TLDs a registrar is likely to offer you. Check the registry's own page before counting on a name. 81 TLDs do carry a rule — see Who can register.

How ds answers for it

RDAP first, WHOIS second — the same order for every TLD. .ac has no RDAP service, so the answer comes from WHOIS text on port 43.

WHOIS
whois.nic.acQueried on port 43, from the bundled whois.json. The name is called free when the reply contains Domain not found — text matching, which is why RDAP is preferred where it exists.

ds mybrand --tld ac --registry prints whichever of these answered. If a bundled WHOIS host has gone stale, IANA is asked who serves .ac today. See Accuracy notes.

The registry

From IANA's delegation record for .ac. .ac is a country-code TLD.

Run by
Internet Computer Bureau LimitedBased in Ascension Island. Delegated 1997-12-19, record last updated 2023-03-07.
Registry site
www.nic.acWhere the registry documents .ac — its rules, its accredited registrars, and any launch phases. Not a shop: registries sell wholesale to registrars, not to you.
Published services
whois.nic.acWhat the registry itself tells IANA it runs. They agree with what ds asks.
Name servers
a0.nic.aca2.nic.acb0.nic.acc0.nic.acThe 4 authoritative servers for the .ac zone — what the root delegates to. Nothing ds queries directly; they are what makes a registered name resolve.

What it is

Derived from the root zone and ICANN's registry list — each one is a fact with a source.

  • country-code IANA Root Zone Database types it "country-code"

In the root zone

The delegation itself, read out of the root zone — serial 2026090900, on 2026-09-09. The registry section above is IANA's record of what .ac was delegated to; this is what the root actually answers with when a resolver asks it where .ac lives.

Delegated to
  • a0.nic.ac65.22.160.12a01:8840:9e::1
  • a2.nic.ac65.22.163.12a01:8840:a1::1
  • b0.nic.ac65.22.161.12a01:8840:9f::1
  • c0.nic.ac65.22.162.12a01:8840:a0::1
The 4 name servers the root hands out for .ac, with the glue addresses that come with them — every one of them answers over IPv6. None of this is what ds queries: these servers know which names exist, not who registered them.
DNSSEC
Signed — 1 DS record in the root
  • key 42665RSA/SHA-256 · SHA-2564B15F405C98F4BC3A370B19E54DBE75DF201EDCD38577C51D277DC6559865D95
Each one is a fingerprint of .ac's own signing key, published by the root and signed with the root's key — which is how a resolver that trusts only one key can prove an answer under .ac came from its registry and was not tampered with in transit. It says nothing about who owns a name or whether one is free.

Ask the root yourself — no registry involved, and the same records this section was built from: dig +norec @a.root-servers.net ac. NS and dig +norec @a.root-servers.net ac. DS.

Zones under .ac

Priced near it