Top-level domain

A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet.[10] The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last label of a fully qualified domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level domain is com. Responsibility for management of most top-level domains is delegated to specific organizations by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which operates the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and is in charge of maintaining the DNS root zone.

"TLD" and "TLDN" redirect here. For Temporary Location Directory Number, see Mobile Station Roaming Number. For other uses, see TLD (disambiguation).
See also: Country code top-level domain

Examples of the over 1,500 TLDs
Example domain Type Sponsoring institution
arpa Infrastructure Internet Architecture Board; restricted[1]
blue Generic Afilias Limited; unrestricted[2][3]
ovh Generic OVH SAS; run by AFNIC, unrestricted[4]
name Restricted generic VeriSign Information Services, Inc.; unrestricted[5]
ac Country-code Cable and Wireless (Ascension Island); unrestricted[6]
zw Country-code Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe; unrestricted[7]
aero Sponsored Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques; unrestricted[8]
ไทย Internationalized country-code THNIC[9]

History

Originally, the top-level domain space was organized into three main groups: Countries, Categories, and Multiorganizations.[11] An additional temporary group consisted of only the initial DNS domain, arpa,[12] and was intended for transitional purposes toward the stabilization of the domain name system.

Types

As of 2015, IANA distinguishes the following groups of top-level domains:[13]

Countries are designated in the Domain Name System by their two-letter ISO country code;[14] there are exceptions, however (e.g., .uk). This group of domains is therefore commonly known as country-code top-level domains (ccTLD). Since 2009, countries with non–Latin-based scripts may apply for internationalized country code top-level domain names, which are displayed in end-user applications in their language-native script or alphabet, but use a Punycode-translated ASCII domain name in the Domain Name System.

Generic top-level domains (formerly categories) initially consisted of gov, edu, com, mil, org, and net. More generic TLDs have been added, such as info.

The authoritative list of current TLDs in the root zone is published at the IANA website at https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/.

Internationalized country code TLDs

An internationalized country code top-level domain (IDN ccTLD) is a top-level domain with a specially encoded domain name that is displayed in an end user application, such as a web browser, in its language-native script or alphabet (such as the Arabic alphabet), or a non-alphabetic writing system (such as Chinese characters). IDN ccTLDs are an application of the internationalized domain name (IDN) system to top-level Internet domains assigned to countries, or independent geographic regions.

ICANN started to accept applications for IDN ccTLDs in November 2009,[15] and installed the first set into the Domain Names System in May 2010. The first set was a group of Arabic names for the countries of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. By May 2010, 21 countries had submitted applications to ICANN, representing 11 scripts.[16]

Infrastructure domain

The domain arpa was the first Internet top-level domain. It was intended to be used only temporarily, aiding in the transition of traditional ARPANET host names to the domain name system. However, after it had been used for reverse DNS lookup, it was found impractical to retire it, and is used today exclusively for Internet infrastructure purposes such as in-addr.arpa for IPv4 and ip6.arpa for IPv6 reverse DNS resolution, uri.arpa and urn.arpa for the Dynamic Delegation Discovery System, and e164.arpa for telephone number mapping based on NAPTR DNS records. For historical reasons, arpa is sometimes considered to be a generic top-level domain.

Reserved domains

A set of domain names is reserved by the Internet Engineering Task Force as special-use domain names per authority of Request for Comments (RFC) 6761. The practice originated in RFC 1597 for reserved address allocations in 1994, and reserved top-level domains in RFC 2606 of 1999. RFC 6761 reserves the following four top-level domain names to avoid confusion and conflict.[17] Any such reserved usage of those TLDs should not occur in production networks that utilize the global domain name system:

  • example: reserved for use in examples
  • invalid: reserved for use in invalid domain names
  • localhost: reserved to avoid conflict with the traditional use of localhost as a hostname
  • test: reserved for use in tests

RFC 6762 reserves the use of .local for link-local host names that can be resolved via the Multicast DNS name resolution protocol.[18]

RFC 7686 reserves the use of .onion for the self-authenticating names of Tor hidden services. These names can only be resolved by a Tor client because of the use of onion routing to protect the anonymity of users.[19]

Internet-Draft draft-wkumari-dnsop-internal-00 proposes reserving the use of .internal for "names which do not have meaning in the global context but do have meaning in a context internal to their network", and for which the RFC 6761 reserved names are semantically inappropriate.

Historical domains

In the late 1980s, InterNIC created the nato domain for use by NATO. NATO considered none of the then-existing TLDs as adequately reflecting their status as an international organization. Soon after this addition, however, InterNIC also created the int TLD for the use by international organizations in general, and persuaded NATO to use the second level domain nato.int instead. The nato TLD, no longer used, was finally removed in July 1996.

Other historical TLDs are cs for Czechoslovakia (now using cz for Czech Republic and sk for Slovakia), dd for East Germany (using de after reunification of Germany), yu for SFR Yugoslavia and Serbia and Montenegro (now using ba for Bosnia and Herzegovina, hr for Croatia, me for Montenegro, mk for North Macedonia, rs for Serbia and si for Slovenia), and zr for Zaire (now cd for the Democratic Republic of the Congo). In contrast to these, the TLD su has remained active despite the demise of the Soviet Union that it represents. Under the chairmanship of Nigel Roberts, ICANN's ccNSO is working on a policy for retirement of ccTLDs that have been removed from ISO 3166.

Proposed domains
Further information: Proposed top-level domain

Around late 2000, ICANN discussed and finally introduced[20] aero, biz, coop, info, museum, name, and pro TLDs. Site owners argued that a similar TLD should be made available for adult and pornographic websites to settle the dispute of obscene content on the Internet, to address the responsibility of US service providers under the US Communications Decency Act of 1996. Several options were proposed including xxx, sex and adult.[21] The .xxx top-level domain eventually went live in 2011.

An older proposal consisted of seven new gTLDs: arts, firm, info, nom, rec, shop, and web.[22] Later biz, info, museum, and name covered most of these old proposals.

During the 32nd International Public ICANN Meeting in Paris in 2008, ICANN started a new process of TLD naming policy to take a "significant step forward on the introduction of new generic top-level domains".[23] This program envisioned the availability of many new or already proposed domains, as well as a new application and implementation process.[24] Observers believed that the new rules could result in hundreds of new gTLDs being registered.[25]

On 13 June 2012, ICANN announced nearly 2,000 applications for top-level domains, which began installation throughout 2013.[26][27] Donuts Inc. invested $57 million in more than 300 applications[28][29] while Famous Four Media applied for 61 new domains.[30] The first seven – bike, clothing, guru, holdings, plumbing, singles, and ventures – were released in 2014.[31]

Pseudo-domains
Main article: Pseudo-top-level domain

Several networks, such as BITNET, CSNET, and UUCP, existed that were in widespread use among computer professionals and academic users, but were not interoperable directly with the Internet and exchanged mail with the Internet via special email gateways. For relaying purposes on the gateways, messages associated with these networks were labeled with suffixes such as bitnet, oz, csnet, or uucp, but these domains did not exist as top-level domains in the public Domain Name System of the Internet.

Most of these networks have long since ceased to exist, and although UUCP still gets significant use in parts of the world where Internet infrastructure has not yet become well established, it subsequently transitioned to using Internet domain names, and pseudo-domains now largely survive as historical relics. One notable exception is the 2007 emergence of SWIFTNet Mail, which uses the swift pseudo-domain.[32]

The anonymity network Tor formerly used the top-level pseudo-domain onion for Tor hidden services, which can only be reached with a Tor client because it uses the Tor onion routing protocol to reach the hidden service to protect the anonymity of users. However, the pseudo-domain became officially reserved in October 2015. i2p provides a similar hidden pseudo-domain, .i2p.

BT hubs use the top-level pseudo-domain home for local DNS resolution of routers, modems and gateways.

See also

References
  1. "Delegation Record for .ARPA". iana.org. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  2. "Delegation Record for .BLUE". www.iana.org. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  3. "Why .BLUE?". Dotblue.blue. Archived from the original on 21 October 2014. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  4. "Delegation Record for .OVH". www.iana.org. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  5. "Delegation Record for .NAME". www.iana.org. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  6. "Delegation Record for .AC". www.iana.org. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  7. "Delegation Record for .ZW". www.iana.org. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  8. "Delegation Record for .AERO". www.iana.org. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  9. "Delegation Record for .ไทย". iana.org. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Retrieved 23 February 2017.
  10. Postel, Jon (March 1994). "Domain Name System Structure and Delegation". Request for Comments. Network Working Group. Retrieved 7 February 2011. This memo provides some information on the structure of the names in the Domain Name System (DNS), specifically the top-level domain names; and on the administration of domains.
  11. Postel, J.; Reynolds, J. (October 1984). "Domain Requirements". Request for Comments. Network Working Group. Retrieved 7 February 2011.
  12. Postel, J. (October 1984). "Domain Name System Implementation Schedule - Revised". Request for Comments. Network Working Group. Retrieved 7 February 2011. This memo is a policy statement on the implementation of the Domain Style Naming System in the Internet. This memo is an update of RFC-881, and RFC-897. This is an official policy statement of the IAB and the DARPA.
  13. "IANA root zone database". IANA.org. Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  14. Codes for the Representation of Names of Countries, ISO-3166, International Organization for Standardization. (May 1981)
  15. "ICANN Bringing the Languages of the World to the Global Internet" (Press release). Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). 30 October 2009. Retrieved 30 October 2009.
  16. "'Historic' day as first non-Latin web addresses go live". BBC News. 6 May 2010. Retrieved 7 May 2010.
  17. RFC 6761, Special-Use Domain Names, S. Cheshire, M. Krochmal, The Internet Society (February 2013)
  18. RFC 6762, Multicast DNS, S. Cheshire, M. Krochmal, The Internet Society (February 2013)
  19. RFC 7686, The ".onion" Special-Use Domain Name, J. Appelbaum, A. Muffett, The Internet Society (October 2015)
  20. "InterNIC FAQs on New Top-Level Domains". Internic.net. 25 September 2002. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
  21. RFC 3675: .sex Considered Dangerous
  22. (historical) gTLD MoU Archived 13 June 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  23. "32nd International Public ICANN Meeting". ICANN. 22 June 2008.
  24. "New gTLD Program". ICANN. Retrieved 15 June 2009.
  25. ICANN Board Approves Sweeping Overhaul of Top-level Domains, CircleID, 26 June 2008.
  26. "The Top 10 Proposed New Top Level Domains So Far". Retrieved 12 June 2012.
  27. "Reveal Day 13 June 2012 – New gTLD Applied-For Strings". Newgtlds.icann.org. Archived from the original on 15 June 2012. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
  28. "Donuts full application list" (PDF). Donuts Inc. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 September 2013. Retrieved 18 August 2013.
  29. Natasha Singer (17 August 2013). "When You Can't Tell Web Suffixes Without a Scorecard". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 August 2013.
  30. "List of 61 new strings applied for Famous Four Media". domaintyper.com.
  31. "What the new top-level domains from ICANN mean for you - Digital Trends". Digital Trends. 5 February 2014.
  32. "SWIFTNet Mail now available". SWIFT. 16 May 2007. Retrieved 3 January 2010.

Further reading
  • Addressing the World: National Identity and Internet Country Code Domains, edited by Erica Schlesinger Wass (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, ISBN 0-7425-2810-3) examines connections between cultures and their ccTLDs.
  • Ruling the Root by Milton Mueller (MIT Press, 2001, ISBN 0-262-13412-8) discusses TLDs and domain name policy more generally.
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