.br

Created and delegated to Brazil in 1989[2] by Jon Postel,[3] initially the domain was operated manually by Registro.br and administered by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP). Originally, only researchers and institutions to which they belonged had the interest and ability to adopt the new system and register domains under .br.

At the time, networks prevalent in the Brazilian academic setting were the BITNET ("Because It's Time NETwork"), the HEPnet ("High Energy Physics Network") and the UUCP ("Unix-to-Unix Copy Program"). As such, even before Brazil officially connected to the Internet in 1991, the .br domain was used to identify the machines participating in networks already in use by academics.

In 1995 the Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil "Internet Management Committee of Brazil" (CGI.br) was created with an objective to coordinate the allocation of Internet addresses (IPs) and the registration of .br domain names. There were 851 domains registered with the Brazilian DNS (Domain Name System") by the beginning of 1996, thereafter experiencing rapid growth with the mass arrival of companies, Internet providers and media onto the Internet. The registration system was automated in 1997 and was developed using open source software.

In 2005, CGI.br created his own executive arm, the Núcleo de Informação e Coordenação do Ponto BR' "The Center for Information and Coordination of Dot BR" (NIC.br),[4] which currently serves in both administrative and operational capacity for the registry.

In 2017, accounts associated with DNS records of Brazilian banks were hacked. Kaspersky's researchers pointed out to a vulnerability in NIC.br's website and suggested its infrastructure had been compromised. NIC's director at the time, Frederico Neves, denied that NIC.br was "hacked", although NIC admitted the vulnerability.[5]

To register any domains under .br, it is necessary to enter into contact with Registro.br. Entities legally established in Brazil as a company ("pessoa jurídica") or a physical person ("profissional liberal" and "pessoas físicas") that has a contact within Brazil can register domains. Foreign companies that have a power-of-attorney legally established in Brazil can also do it by following specific rules.

The registration of domains with special Portuguese characters (à, á, â, ã, é, ê, í, ó, ô, õ, ú, ü and ç) is accepted since 2005.[6]

.br is the most common Portuguese language Web site suffix,[1] surpassing all other Portuguese-speaking countries' TLDs as well as .com in popularity.

There were initially 66 second-level domains:[7]

However the restriction were dropped in 2013 and there are a significant number of second level domain names currently registered.

• Internet in Brazil
• .rio

• IANA .br whois information
• Registro.br : Brazil's official registry administrator
• Second-level domain statistics for .br
• .br Registration