com.br domain is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Brazil. It was administered by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil) until 2005 and now it's administered by Brazilian Network Information Center (Núcleo de Informação e Coordenação do Ponto br). A local contact is required for any registration. Registrations of domain names with Portuguese characters are also accepted.
With the exception of universities, the second-level domain is fixed and selected from a list that defines the category. For example, site.art.br is in the art (music, folklore etc.) category, and site.org.br is in the non-governmental organization category. Institutions of tertiary education were allowed to use the ccSLD .edu.br, although some use .com.br and others (mainly public universities) use .br. There are also some other few exceptions that were allowed to use the second level domain until the end of 2000. As of February 2007, most domain registrations ignore categories and register in the .com.br domain, which has over 90% of all registered domains. The .jus.br (Judiciary), and .b.br domains has mandatory DNSSEC use.
.br is the most common Portuguese language Web site suffix[1], surpassing all other Portuguese-speaking countries' TLDs as well as .com in popularity.
