The governing body of the internet, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), has delegated the .monash top-level domain (TLD) to Victoria's Monash University.

Monash Uni said the delegation only occurred after a lengthy application process and a review of the university's technical, operational, and financial capabilities.

"The .monash global top-level domain name will allow the university to manage all of its domain names under the global identity of Monash," said Monash CIO Dr Ian Tebbett in a statement. "Greater control over our content and domains will strengthen our online presence and better represent Monash as a global institution. Monash University is an early adopter of new technologies, and this is an innovation that will ultimately benefit users by allowing us to develop a new customer-focused university web presence."

The university said it will develop a pair of .monash sites in the near future, with the shift to .monash to occur gradually, and the monash.edu presence to remain.

The extension of TLDs beyond the standard country codes and well-known .com, .net, and .org domains has been heralded for a number of years, with the price for applications in the range of $185,000.

Although Monash has grabbed the first domain name tailored to a single organisation, a number of generic TLDs have already been delegated.