ICANN Acronyms and Terms
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D
delegation
The assignment of administrative authority for a domain to a registry operator. A registry operator to which this authority is delegated assumes the responsibility for operating and maintaining the authoritative name servers for a given domain.
A domain at any level in the Domain Name System hierarchy can optionally delegate authority to any or all its subdomains (children). To put a delegation into effect, the operator of the parent domain must update its zone file to point to the authoritative name servers for the child domains to which authority has been delegated.