The management of the Internet Top-Level-Domain Names in Mauritania was delegated by IANA (ex ICANN) to the Faculty of Science and Technology (FST) of the University of Nouakchott in April 1996, at a time when the country was not yet connected to the Internet. As a result, the FST was forced to use external partners to host ".mr" domain name servers. This task was carried out thanks to the cooperation with the IRD (Montpellier – France) which managed the so-called servers.

In April 2000, the FST repatriated the name servers after having satisfied the conditions for this operation. Thus a NIC (Network Information Center) was created within the Faculty of Science and Technology with the missions of:

- Internet Domain’s management: domain name registration and monitoring of zones installed in the .mr zone;

- Operation of the Domain Name Servers (DNS) for the dot MR zone (.MR);