LSNIC

Lesotho Network Information Centre (LsNIC) proprietary was founded in January 2016 as a non-profit making organization registered under the Lesotho Companies Act of 2011. Its mandate is to manage the Lesotho Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) dot ls (.ls). LsNIC is founded by Lesotho Communications Authority (L.C.A.) The ccTLD is a critical national resource; it has been managed at Rhodes University in South Africa for some time, while the sponsoring organization and the administrative contacts have been within the country, the technical contact with the infrastructure has been outside the country.

The formation of LsNIC brought the re-delegation of the technical contact back to the country, the network infrastructure and the nameservers are hosted and managed within the country. This gives the country much control and freedom on how the ccTLD is operated to benefit the nation it serves. With the massive adoption of Internet, domain name registration has become one of the most dynamic industries, and having everything in our control as the country, will benefit to have up to date policies, rules and procedures.

The .ls domain was first established and delegated in January 1993. The National University of Lesotho (N.U.L) was the sponsoring authority. Due to lack of technical expertise then, Rhodes University acted as the registry for .ls and technical authority. They hosted and managed the primary servers.