Free DNS domain name of zz.ac

We are proud to announce the project of zz.nic, which offer anther free DNS domain suffix of .ZZ.AC. But should I shoose this new domain name?

The ZZ.AC is short and meaningful.

The AC is short for academia. And countries like the UK and Japan operate AC.UK and AC.JP for academic institutes such as universities, colleges, and research institutes. So the ccTLD of .AC is a good choice for personal leaning or academic scenario.

The country behind the ccTLD .AC is the Ascension Island. And according to the rules¹:

✏️Note

3.1 An applicant may reside in any legal jurisdiction.

So everybody can apply domain of in the zone .AC, and ZZ.AC is legal for everyon, as well.

Besides, the ZZ is the final conbination of alpha-2 country code list, which I use to represent all countries on the Earth.

So the domain suffix ZZ.AC has a clear meaning that all peopole living in all country on the world can ZZ.AC subdomain for academic purpose.

What’s more, the ZZ.AC is a new launched domain. So there are many short and meaning full subdomain available. You can choose you favorite short one.

The ZZ.AC is easy to apply.

Just go to the official website https://nic.zz.ac and search the name you like. If it is aviable, just click the Apply button and fill the application form. Besides the name and E-mail, you also need to supply the meaning of your domain and the website plan the registry. Once you submit your application, you will receive one Email to very you address. After you verify you Email inbox, the regisiry will review your application. You will be notified by Email once approved.

It’s done 🎉

The ZZ.AC is easy to use.

Once you got your domain, you can manage DNS records by the web zone editor.

The operation steps are very simple.

Go to the editor page https://nic.zz.ac/#/zone. Fill your Email and domain name, and click the button to send zone editor link to your inbox.

Check your Email inbox and click the editor link, you will open one simple web page with only one big textarea. Just input the DNS Zone file² into the textarea and save it.

Here is some example of zone file (suppose your domain is EXAMPLE.ZZ.AC):

@       IN MX       mail         ; mail.example.zz.ac is the mail server of example.zz.ac
mail    IN A        1.1.1.1      ; IPv4 address for mail.example.zz.ac
mail    IN AAAAA    2001:db8::1  ; IPv6 address for mail.example.zz.ac
www     IN CNAME    example.com. ; www.example.com is an alias for example.com

Input and save. Done.

The ZZ.AC is secure by default.

The domain ZZ.AC has been submitted to the HSTS preload list³. Which means all the subdomain of ZZ.AC must serve website via the HTTPS protocol to protect the data between user agent and web server.

Besides, the DNS server has the builtin DNSSEC and enable it by default. All recursive that support DNSSEC can vaidate the query result via ED25519 curve.

The ZZ.AC is stable.

The ZZ.AC has both unicat and anycast authoritative servers all over the world.

There are three unicat servers:

• ns-cn-1.zz.ac is running on Huawei Cloud, based in Shanghai, CN
• ns-us-1.zz.ac is running on DMIT, based in San Jose, US
• ns-us-2.zz.ac is running on DartNode, based in , US

There are two unicast servers. One is offered by ns-global.zone which has only one A and one AAAA address. The other is offered by dns.he.net, which has five different instances from ns1.he.net to ns5.he.net.

It’s hard for all these authoritative servers failed together. You can trust the serverces combination.

The ZZ.AC is versatile.

Once you registerd a domain name of ZZ.AC, you also own some free WebDAV space, and you dan deploy your web contents via the WebDAV to our server.

Just go to the WebDAV panel https://nic.zz.ac/#/webdav and fill your Email and domain, you will receive the login infomation of WebDAV space. In order to upload contents, you should add this CNAME in your zone:

@ CNAME nic.zz.ac

Then you can upload files to https://your-domain.zz.ac and access them with the same path.

Besides WebDAV space, you will get free Email forwarding alias, as well. Every mail sending to your-domain@zz.ac will be forwarded to your register Email address. This alia address @zz.ac also support Gmail like + suffix. For example, your-domain+webdav@zz.ac will also be forwardwd to your own mail box.

Conclusion

If you have read this far, why not register your domain? Good luck.