ds

.zm

Country-code top-level domain for Zambia

RDAP + WHOIS

Register
—first year
Renew
—a year
Transfer
—to move it
Registrars
—quoting it
Lookup
RDAP + WHOISanswers for it
DNSSEC
Signed1 DS record in the root
Level
Secondmybrand.zm

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 zm

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 .zm, 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 .zm, 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. .zm has both, so RDAP answers and WHOIS is the fallback if it does not.

RDAP
https://rdap.nic.zmFrom IANA's bootstrap, refreshed when this page was built. The lookup is https://rdap.nic.zm/domain/mybrand.zm — a 404 means the name is free.
WHOIS
whois.zicta.zmQueried 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 zm --registry prints whichever of these answered. If a bundled WHOIS host has gone stale, IANA is asked who serves .zm today. See Accuracy notes.

The registry

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

Run by
Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA)Based in Zambia. Delegated 1994-03-25, record last updated 2024-04-24.
Registry site
registry.zicta.zmWhere the registry documents .zm — its rules, its accredited registrars, and any launch phases. Not a shop: registries sell wholesale to registrars, not to you.
Published services
rdap.nic.zm · whois.zicta.zmWhat the registry itself tells IANA it runs. They agree with what ds asks.
Name servers
gransy.nic.zmns-zm.afrinic.netpch.nic.zmThe 3 authoritative servers for the .zm 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 .zm was delegated to; this is what the root actually answers with when a resolver asks it where .zm lives.

Delegated to
  • pch.nic.zm204.61.216.732001:500:14:6073:ad::1
  • ns-zm.afrinic.net196.216.168.442001:43f8:120::44
  • gransy.nic.zm185.28.194.194185.38.108.108
The 3 name servers the root hands out for .zm, with the glue addresses that come with them — 2 of them answer 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 35075RSA/SHA-256 · SHA-256EB06F34B2B9F1729366BDA17411CD4CC2193644368905DFB0CFB1868BD590581
Each one is a fingerprint of .zm'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 .zm 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 zm. NS and dig +norec @a.root-servers.net zm. DS.