.NU Domain Ltd Challenges .Com With Announcment of First Non-English Internet Addresses; Microsoft endorses NUBIND as compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, and Windows 2000.

Business/Technology Editors

CAIRO, Egypt--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 7, 2000

.NU Domain Ltd (www.whats.nu.) one of the fastest growing Top Level Domains (TLDs) on the Internet, announced today that it is the first TLD to offer Internet domain names using non-English alphabets so companies and organizations can identify themselves in their native languages. Its new service makes possible e-mail and web site addresses using a wide array of letters and symbols such as tildes, cedillas, umlauts and accents, as well as Japanese and Korean pictographic systems. This native-language capability has not been available to users of TLDs such as ".com," ".net," ".edu," or ".org" as managed by Network Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ:NSOL), under contract from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The new system, NUBIND(tm), is compatible with Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5.0, and Windows 2000. Levon Esibov, Product Manager for MS Windows2000 DNS, said "I can confirm successful zone transfers from NUBIND to Windows 2000 DNS server and I can confirm that Windows 2000 DNS server supports UTF-8 encoded characters in DNS names."

NUBIND has been developed under the guidance of Dr. Paul V. Mockapetris, former chairman of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), architect of the Domain Name System and technical advisor to .NU Domain. NUBIND is an enhanced version of DNS that allows .NU Domain to deliver this service while remaining in compliance with the technology standards of the Internet.

"This new service is the first to allow Internet users anywhere in the world to use their local-language keyboards and character sets for Websites. It gives international businesses the opportunity to brand their company and product names around the world using local languages," said J. William Semich, CEO of .NU Domain. "It stands in stark contrast to the English-dominated .com system administered by Network Solutions, Inc., the company that owns exclusive rights to four top level domains such as .com, .org. .net and .edu. This represents the only real alternative to that system." The announcement was made today by Semich at the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names & Numbers conference (ICANN) here.

"What we're doing here with NUBIND, is making the Internet a truly international system. No longer will we see organizations forced to shoehorn their names into the English spelling system." Semich added, "If one of the crucial values of the Internet is international communication, then it's only right for the Internet to accommodate the span of different alphabetic systems that people use to express themselves. The Internet shouldn't specify English as everyone's first language."

Mockapetris said he expects new DNS standards to be approved supporting internationalized domain names in the near future.

".NU Domain has a history of providing innovative alternative services for Internet users," said Dr. Mockapetris. "Its development of this unique new naming service represents a major breakthrough in the globalization of Internet domain names. It's high time that we got serious about internationalization."

NUBIND provides maximum support for Internet standards, including RFC 1034 and 1035, RFC 2277 and 2279, ISO-10646 and Unicode. It can use any Unicode-aware editor. Unicode-aware operating systems include Sun Microsystems' Solaris, Microsoft's Windows NT and Windows 2000, and Apple's MacOS 8 and 9. The UNIX operating system does not provide complete Unicode-awareness at this time, but this feature is under substantial development.

About .NU Domain Ltd

.NU Domain Ltd, a US-based private corporation, offers the only competitive alternative to Network Solutions Inc.'s. (NASDAQ:NSOL) .com domain name. The company is focused on serving end users and the small office/home office (SOHO) market, as well as Internet users in countries with restrictions on the domain name registration process.

The .NU domain is the fastest growing Top Level Domain (TLD) on the Internet. It has registered nearly 65,000 .NU domain names on the Internet during the past 30 months. .NU Domain Ltd also offers domain name parking services for customers who need to lock in a domain name but have no immediate plans to use it. Find further information about .NU and other services that the company provides at: www.nunames.nu

Current .NU customers are located in dozens of countries throughout the world, including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Japan, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom, the Canary Islands, Spain, Brazil, New Zealand, Indonesia, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines and Australia, in addition to the United States. The list of registered .NU names ranges from addresses for large corporations such as the International Data Group (www.idg.nu) and the Coca-Cola Company (www.coca-cola.nu) to smaller organizations such as the Swedish floor ball team Svdra Kdrr (www. Sodra Karr.nu).

.NU Domain and NUBIND are trademarks of .NU Domain Ltd All others companies and products are trademarks of their respective companies.