.box

Generic top-level domain

Register: —first year
Renew: —a year
Transfer: —to move it
Registrars: —quoting it
Lookup: RDAP + WHOISanswers for it
DNSSEC: Signed2 DS records in the root
Level: Secondmybrand.box

Check a name

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

Name

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 box

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

No registrar in the price table bundled with ds quotes .box, so the CLI prints no figure beside it — one of 927 such TLDs. That is a gap in the table as often as it is a TLD nobody sells. See Prices for supplying your own table with --pricing-file.

Who can register

No eligibility rule is on file for .box, 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. .box has both, so RDAP answers and WHOIS is the fallback if it does not.

RDAP: https://rdap.centralnic.com/boxFrom IANA's bootstrap, refreshed when this page was built. The lookup is https://rdap.centralnic.com/box/domain/mybrand.box — a 404 means the name is free.
WHOIS: whois.nic.boxQueried on port 43, from the bundled whois.json. The name is called free when the reply contains the queried object does not exist — text matching, which is why RDAP is preferred where it exists.

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

The registry

From IANA's delegation record for .box. .box is a generic TLD.

Run by: Intercap Registry Inc.Based in Cayman Islands. Delegated 2016-10-27, record last updated 2023-11-17.
Registry site: intercap.incWhere the registry documents .box — its rules, its accredited registrars, and any launch phases. Not a shop: registries sell wholesale to registrars, not to you.
Published services: rdap.centralnic.com · whois.nic.boxWhat the registry itself tells IANA it runs. They agree with what ds asks.
Name servers: a.nic.boxb.nic.boxc.nic.boxd.nic.boxThe 4 authoritative servers for the .box 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.

generic IANA Root Zone Database types it "generic"
new-gtld ICANN delegated it on or after 2013-10-23, when the 2013 round opened — see delegated

What it is for

Our reading, not a fact — nothing in the root zone says what a TLD means. Hand-maintained in tld-categories.json.

Internet & Technology Software, hosting, data, devices, and the web itself.

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 .box was delegated to; this is what the root actually answers with when a resolver asks it where .box lives.

Delegated to: a.nic.box194.169.218.1392001:67c:13cc::1:139
b.nic.box185.24.64.1392a04:2b00:13cc::1:139
c.nic.box212.18.248.1392a04:2b00:13ee::139
d.nic.box212.18.249.1392a04:2b00:13ff::139
The 4 name servers the root hands out for .box, 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 — 2 DS records in the root
key 62294RSA/SHA-256 · SHA-25629A911BDBF1FC105D593EA39A619BF1E89CB1BFE73FF70FB7E80B75AB9A7A8B8
key 63242RSA/SHA-256 · SHA-256F63250257503CCE60195E71C2E346A2D8BDE06DCBD666B9EE4F860D75988702D
Each one is a fingerprint of .box'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 .box 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 box. NS and dig +norec @a.root-servers.net box. DS.