Generic Top-level Domain Article Index for
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  • .aero - for the air transport industry

  • .biz - for business use

  • .cat - for Catalan language/culture

  • .com - for commercial organizations, but unrestricted

  • .coop - for cooperatives

  • .edu - for educational establishments

  • .eu - for the European community

  • .gov - for governments and their agencies in the United States

  • .info - for informational sites, but unrestricted

  • .int - for international organizations established by treaty

  • .jobs - for employment-related sites

  • .mil - for the US military

  • .mobi - for sites catering to mobile devices

  • .museum - for museums

  • .name - for families and individuals

  • .net - originally for network infrastructures, now unrestricted

  • .org - originally for organizations not clearly falling within the other gTLDs, now unrestricted

  • .pro - for certain professions

  • .travel - for travel agents, airlines, hoteliers, tourism bureaus, etc.


The following gTLDs are in the process of being approved, and may be added to the root nameservers in the near future:

  • .asia - for the Asian community

  • .post - for postal services

  • .tel - for services involving connections between the telephone network and the Internet

  • .xxx - for sexually-explicit sites



HISTORY

When generic top-level domains were first implemented, in January 1985 , there were six:

While .net was not listed in the original RFC document describing the domain name system, it was added by the time the first group of names were implemented.

The .com, .net, and .org gTLDs, despite their original different uses, are now in practice open for use by anybody for any purpose.

In November 1988 , another gTLD was introduced, .int . This gTLD was introduced in response to NATO 's request for a domain name which adequately reflected its character as an international organization. It is also used for some Internet infrastructure databases, such as .ip6.int, the IPv6 equivalent of .in-addr.arpa. However, in May 2000 , the Internet Architecture Board proposed to close the .int domain to new infrastructure databases. All future such databases would be created in .arpa (a legacy of the pre-TLD system), and existing ones would move to .arpa wherever feasible.

By the mid- 1997 , the IAHC issued a report ignoring the Draft Postel recommendations and instead recommended the introduction of seven new gTLDs (.arts, .firm, .info, .nom, .rec, .store, and .web). However, progress on this stalled after the U.S. government intervened and nothing ever came of it.

In October 1998 , the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names And Numbers (ICANN) formed to take over the task of managing domain names. After a call for proposals ( August 15 , 2000 ) and a brief period of public consultation, ICANN announced on November 16 , 2000 its selection of the following seven new gTLDs:


These new gTLDs started to come into use in June 2001 , and by the end of that year all except .pro existed, with .biz, .info and .museum already in full operation. .name and .coop became fully operational in January 2002 , and .aero followed later in the year. .pro became a gTLD in May 2002 , but did not become fully operational until June 2004 .

ICANN is adding further gTLDs, starting with a set of Sponsored Top-level Domain s (like the previous .aero, .coop, and .museum). The application period for these lasted from 15 December 2003 until 16 March 2004 , and resulted in ten applications. As Of June 2005 , ICANN had announced the approval in principle of several new TLDs, with details still being worked out and implementation still in the future:


Proposals for .asia and .mail were still under consideration. There was also a second proposal for .tel .


UNOFFICIAL TLDS AND PROPOSALS

Various organizations and businesses have proposed additional TLDs, and some have created unofficial implementations of them, which are not generally functional. These include .berlin .sco[http://www.dotsco.org , .love[http://www.dotlove.org], and many others.


EXTERNAL LINKS