The University of Malta was awarded authority by IANA in 1992 for .mt, the top-level country domain for Malta. At that time the University delegated responsibility to a committee constituted for the purpose whose activities included:

• creation and implementation of a domain naming policy for .mt;

• maintenance of the .mt nameservers;

• promotion of the .mt domain;

• registration of new domain names.

Subsequently the University invested the committee with a formal status as Malta Internet Foundation, also known as NIC(Malta), which was officially inaugurated in January 1999.

With respect to domain registration and maintenance, NIC(Malta) plays a similar role to that assumed by network information centres in other countries, such as Nominet(UK) and DENIC(Germany).

In addition, the mission of the Malta Internet Foundation includes activities to promote use of the Internet in Malta. The Foundation was responsible for the setting up of the Malta Internet eXchange (MIX) to facilitate local IP traffic between local ISPs. Current activities include supporting IPv6 and offering annual prizes for outstanding projects on Internet-related themes. The Foundation is a member of the Maltese IPv6 Task Force and, together with University of Malta, coordinates the Malta IPv6 national test-bed (M6ix).