The Business of Domain Names

The Business of Domain Names
Home | Domain name system | Domaining | Website | License | Index
Domaining is the business of buying, selling, developing and monetizing Internet domain names. Such
domain name portfolios often include cleverly chosen and highly marketable generic domain names, or
domains whose registrations had lapsed yet still retain reasonable traffic. There is sometimes no actual
intent to use any of the domain names with the exception of generating advertising revenue through
domain parking.
by Nicolae Sfetcu, and MultiMedia
This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.
Domain name system
Home | Domain name | Hostname | Fully qualified domain name | Internationalized domain name
| Subdomain | Domain name registry | WHOIS
On the Internet, the Domain Name System (DNS) associates various sorts of information with so-called
domain names; most importantly, it serves as the "phone book" for the Internet: it translates human-
readable computer hostnames, e.g. en.wikipedia.org, into the IP addresses that networking equipment
needs for delivering information. It also stores other information such as the list of mail exchange
servers that accept email for a given domain. In providing a worldwide keyword-based redirection
service, the Domain Name System is an essential component of contemporary Internet use.
Uses
The most basic use of DNS is to translate hostnames to IP addresses. It is in very simple terms like a
phone book. For example, if you want to know the internet address of en.wikipedia.org, the Domain
Name System can be used to tell you it is 66.230.200.100. DNS also has other important uses.
Pre-eminently, DNS makes it possible to assign Internet destinations to the human organization or
concern they represent, independently of the physical routing hierarchy represented by the numerical IP
address. Because of this, hyperlinks and Internet contact information can remain the same, whatever the
current IP routing arrangements may be, and can take a human-readable form (such as "wikipedia.
org") which is rather easier to remember than an IP address (such as 66.230.200.100). People take
advantage of this when they recite meaningful URLs and e-mail addresses without caring how the
machine will actually locate them.
The Domain Name System distributes the responsibility for assigning domain names and mapping them
to IP networks by allowing an authoritative server for each domain to keep track of its own changes,
avoiding the need for a central registrar to be continually consulted and updated.
History
The practice of using a name as a more human-legible abstraction of a machine's numerical address on
the network predates even TCP/IP, and goes all the way to the ARPAnet era. Back then however, a
different system was used, as DNS was only invented in 1983, shortly after TCP/IP was deployed. With
the older system, each computer on the network retrieved a file called HOSTS.TXT from a computer at
SRI (now SRI International). The HOSTS.TXT file mapped numerical addresses to names. A hosts file
still exists on most modern operating systems, either by default or through configuration, and allows
users to specify an IP address (eg. 192.0.34.166) to use for a hostname (eg. www.example.net) without
checking DNS. As of 2006, the hosts file serves primarily for troubleshooting DNS errors or for
mapping local addresses to more organic names. Systems based on a hosts file have inherent limitations,
because of the obvious requirement that every time a given computer's address changed, every computer
that seeks to communicate with it would need an update to its hosts file.
The growth of networking called for a more scalable system: one that recorded a change in a host's
address in one place only. Other hosts would learn about the change dynamically through a notification
system, thus completing a globally accessible network of all hosts' names and their associated IP
Addresses.
At the request of Jon Postel, Paul Mockapetris invented the Domain Name System in 1983 and wrote the
first implementation. The original specifications appear in RFC 882 and 883. In 1987, the publication of
RFC 1034 and RFC 1035 updated the DNS specification and made RFC 882 and RFC 883 obsolete.
Several more-recent RFCs have proposed various extensions to the core DNS protocols.
In 1984, four Berkeley students — Douglas Terry, Mark Painter, David Riggle and Songnian Zhou —
wrote the first UNIX implementation, which was maintained by Ralph Campbell thereafter. In 1985,
Kevin Dunlap of DEC significantly re-wrote the DNS implementation and renamed it BIND (Berkeley
Internet Name Domain, previously: Berkeley Internet Name Daemon). Mike Karels, Phil Almquist and
Paul Vixie have maintained BIND since then. BIND was ported to the Windows NT platform in the
early 1990s.
Due to BIND's long history of security issues and exploits, several alternative nameserver/resolver
programs have been written and distributed in recent years.
How DNS works in theory

Domain names, arranged in a tree, cut into zones, each served by a
nameserver.
The domain name space consists of a tree of domain names. Each node or leaf in the tree has one or
more resource records, which hold information associated with the domain name. The tree sub-divides
into zones. A zone consists of a collection of connected nodes authoritatively served by an
authoritative DNS nameserver. (Note that a single nameserver can host several zones.)
When a system administrator wants to let another administrator control a part of the domain name space
within his or her zone of authority, he or she can delegate control to the other administrator. This splits a
part of the old zone off into a new zone, which comes under the authority of the second administrator's
nameservers. The old zone becomes no longer authoritative for what goes under the authority of the new
zone.
A resolver looks up the information associated with nodes. A resolver knows how to communicate with
name servers by sending DNS requests, and heeding DNS responses. Resolving usually entails iterating
through several name servers to find the needed information.
Some resolvers function simplistically and can only communicate with a single name server. These
simple resolvers rely on a recursing name server to perform the work of finding information for them.
Parts of a domain name

A domain name usually consists of two or more parts (technically labels), separated by dots. For
example wikipedia.org.
● The rightmost label conveys the top-level domain (for example, the address en.wikipedia.
org has the top-level domain org).
● Each label to the left specifies a subdivision or subdomain of the domain above it. Note that
"subdomain" expresses relative dependence, not absolute dependence: for example,
wikipedia.org comprises a subdomain of the org domain, and en.wikipedia.org
comprises a subdomain of the domain wikipedia.org. In theory, this subdivision can go
down to 127 levels deep, and each label can contain up to 63 characters, as long as the whole
domain name does not exceed a total length of 255 characters. But in practice some domain
registries have shorter limits than that.
● A hostname refers to a domain name that has one or more associated IP addresses. For example,
the en.wikipedia.org and wikipedia.org domains are both hostnames, but the org
domain is not.
The Domain Name System consists of a hierarchical set of DNS servers. Each domain or subdomain
has one or more authoritative DNS servers that publish information about that domain and the name
servers of any domains "beneath" it. The hierarchy of authoritative DNS servers matches the hierarchy
of domains. At the top of the hierarchy stand the root nameservers: the servers to query when looking
up (resolving) a top-level domain name (TLD).
Iterative and recursive queries:
● An Iterative query is one where the DNS server may provide a partial answer to the query (or
give an error). DNS servers must support non-recursive queries.
● A recursive query is one where the DNS server will fully answer the query (or give an error).
DNS servers are not required to support recursive queries and both the resolver (or another DNS
acting recursively on behalf of another resolver) negotiate use of recursive service using bits in
the query headers.
Address resolution mechanism
(This description deliberately uses the fictional .example TLD in accordance with the DNS
guidelines themselves.)
In theory a full host name may have several name segments, (e.g ahost.ofasubnet.ofabiggernet.
inadomain.example). In practice, in the experience of the majority of public users of Internet services,
full host names will frequently consist of just three segments (ahost.inadomain.example, and most often
www.inadomain.example).
For querying purposes, software interprets the name segment by segment, from right to left, using an
iterative search procedure. At each step along the way, the program queries a corresponding DNS server
to provide a pointer to the next server which it should consult.
A DNS recursor consults three nameservers to resolve the address

www.wikipedia.org.
As originally envisaged, the process was as simple as:
1. the local system is pre-configured with the known addresses of the root servers in a file of root
hints, which need to be updated periodically by the local administrator from a reliable source to
be kept up to date with the changes which occur over time.
2. query one of the root servers to find the server authoritative for the next level down (so in the
case of our simple hostname, a root server would be asked for the address of a server with
detailed knowledge of the example top level domain).
3. querying this second server for the address of a DNS server with detailed knowledge of the
second-level domain (inadomain.example in our example).
4. repeating the previous step to progress down the name, until the final step which would, rather
than generating the address of the next DNS server, return the final address sought.
The diagram illustrates this process for the real host www.wikipedia.org.
The mechanism in this simple form has a difficulty: it places a huge operating burden on the root
servers, with each and every search for an address starting by querying one of them. Being as critical as
they are to the overall function of the system such heavy use would create an insurmountable bottleneck
for trillions of queries placed every day. The section DNS in practice describes how this is addressed.
Circular dependencies and glue records
Name servers in delegations appear listed by name, rather than by IP address. This means that a
resolving name server must issue another DNS request to find out the IP address of the server to which it
has been referred. Since this can introduce a circular dependency if the nameserver referred to is under
the domain that it is authoritative of, it is occasionally necessary for the nameserver providing the
delegation to also provide the IP address of the next nameserver. This record is called a glue record.
For example, assume that the sub-domain en.wikipedia.org contains further sub-domains (such as
something.en.wikipedia.org) and that the authoritative nameserver for these lives at ns1.
en.wikipedia.org. A computer trying to resolve something.en.wikipedia.org will thus
first have to resolve ns1.en.wikipedia.org. Since ns1 is also under the en.wikipedia.org
subdomain, resolving ns1.en.wikipedia.org requires resolving ns1.en.wikipedia.org
which is exactly the circular dependency mentioned above. The dependency is broken by the glue record
in the nameserver of wikipedia.org that provides the IP address of ns1.en.wikipedia.org
directly to the requestor, enabling it to bootstrap the process by figuring out where ns1.en.
wikipedia.org is located.
In practice
When an application (such as a web browser) tries to find the IP address of a domain name, it doesn't
necessarily follow all of the steps outlined in the Theory section above. We will first look at the concept
of caching, and then outline the operation of DNS in "the real world."
Caching and time to live
Because of the huge volume of requests generated by a system like DNS, the designers wished to
provide a mechanism to reduce the load on individual DNS servers. To this end, the DNS resolution
process allows for caching (i.e. the local recording and subsequent consultation of the results of a DNS
query) for a given period of time after a successful answer. How long a resolver caches a DNS response
(i.e. how long a DNS response remains valid) is determined by a value called the time to live (TTL). The
TTL is set by the administrator of the DNS server handing out the response. The period of validity may
vary from just seconds to days or even weeks.
Caching time
As a noteworthy consequence of this distributed and caching architecture, changes to DNS do not
always take effect immediately and globally. This is best explained with an example: If an administrator
has set a TTL of 6 hours for the host www.wikipedia.org, and then changes the IP address to which
www.wikipedia.org resolves at 12:01pm, the administrator must consider that a person who cached
a response with the old IP address at 12:00pm will not consult the DNS server again until 6:00pm. The
period between 12:01pm and 6:00pm in this example is called caching time, which is best defined as a
period of time that begins when you make a change to a DNS record and ends after the maximum
amount of time specified by the TTL expires. This essentially leads to an important logistical
consideration when making changes to DNS: not everyone is necessarily seeing the same thing you're
seeing. RFC 1537 helps to convey basic rules for how to set the TTL.
Note that the term "propagation", although very widely used in this context, does not describe the effects
of caching well. Specifically, it implies that [1] when you make a DNS change, it somehow spreads to
all other DNS servers (instead, other DNS servers check in with yours as needed), and [2] that you do
not have control over the amount of time the record is cached (you control the TTL values for all DNS
records in your domain, except your NS records and any authoritative DNS servers that use your domain
name).
Some resolvers may override TTL values, as the protocol supports caching for up to 68 years or no
caching at all. Negative caching (the non-existence of records) is determined by name servers
authoritative for a zone which MUST include the SOA record when reporting no data of the requested
type exists. The MINIMUM field of the SOA record and the TTL of the SOA itself is used to establish
the TTL for the negative answer. RFC 2308
Many people incorrectly refer to a mysterious 48 hour or 72 hour propagation time when you make a
DNS change. When one changes the NS records for one's domain or the IP addresses for hostnames of
authoritative DNS servers using one's domain (if any), there can be a lengthy period of time before all
DNS servers use the new information. This is because those records are handled by the zone parent DNS
servers (for example, the .com DNS servers if your domain is example.com), which typically cache
those records for 48 hours. However, those DNS changes will be immediately available for any DNS
servers that do not have them cached. And any DNS changes on your domain other than the NS records
and authoritative DNS server names can be nearly instantaneous, if you choose for them to be (by
lowering the TTL once or twice ahead of time, and waiting until the old TTL expires before making the
change).
In the real world
DNS resolving from program to OS-resolver to ISP-resolver to greater

system.
Users generally do not communicate directly with a DNS resolver. Instead DNS resolution takes place
transparently in client applications such as web browsers, mail clients, and other Internet applications.
When a request is made which necessitates a DNS lookup, such programs send a resolution request to
the local DNS resolver in the operating system which in turn handles the communications required.
The DNS resolver will almost invariably have a cache (see above) containing recent lookups. If the
cache can provide the answer to the request, the resolver will return the value in the cache to the
program that made the request. If the cache does not contain the answer, the resolver will send the
request to a designated DNS server or servers. In the case of most home users, the Internet service
provider to which the machine connects will usually supply this DNS server: such a user will either have
configured that server's address manually or allowed DHCP to set it; however, where systems
administrators have configured systems to use their own DNS servers, their DNS resolvers point to
separately maintained nameservers of the organization. In any event, the name server thus queried will
follow the process outlined above, until it either successfully finds a result or does not. It then returns its
results to the DNS resolver; assuming it has found a result, the resolver duly caches that result for future
use, and hands the result back to the software which initiated the request.
Broken resolvers
An additional level of complexity emerges when resolvers violate the rules of the DNS protocol. Some
people have suggested that a number of large ISPs have configured their DNS servers to violate rules
(presumably to allow them to run on less-expensive hardware than a fully compliant resolver), such as
by disobeying TTLs, or by indicating that a domain name does not exist just because one of its name
servers does not respond.
As a final level of complexity, some applications such as Web browsers also have their own DNS cache,
in order to reduce the use of the DNS resolver library itself. This practice can add extra difficulty to
DNS debugging, as it obscures which data is fresh, or lies in which cache. These caches typically have
very short caching times of the order of one minute. A notable exception is Internet Explorer; recent
[1]
versions cache DNS records for half an hour.
Other applications
The system outlined above provides a somewhat simplified scenario. The Domain Name System
includes several other functions:
● Hostnames and IP addresses do not necessarily match on a one-to-one basis. Many hostnames
may correspond to a single IP address: combined with virtual hosting, this allows a single
machine to serve many web sites. Alternatively a single hostname may correspond to many IP
addresses: this can facilitate fault tolerance and load distribution, and also allows a site to move
physical location seamlessly.
● There are many uses of DNS besides translating names to IP addresses. For instance, Mail
transfer agents use DNS to find out where to deliver e-mail for a particular address. The domain
to mail exchanger mapping provided by MX records accommodates another layer of fault
tolerance and load distribution on top of the name to IP address mapping.
● Sender Policy Framework and DomainKeys instead of creating their own record types were
designed to take advantage of another DNS record type, the TXT record.
● To provide resilience in the event of computer failure, multiple DNS servers are usually provided
for coverage of each domain, and at the top level, thirteen very powerful root servers exist, with
additional "copies" of several of them distributed worldwide via Anycast.
DNS primarily uses UDP on port 53 [2] to serve requests. Almost all DNS queries consist of a single
UDP request from the client followed by a single UDP reply from the server. TCP comes into play only
when the response data size exceeds 512 bytes, or for such tasks as zone transfer. Some operating
systems such as HP-UX are known to have resolver implementations that use TCP for all queries, even
when UDP would suffice.
Extensions to DNS
EDNS is an extension of the DNS protocol which enhances the transport of DNS data in UDP packages,
and adds support for expanding the space of request and response codes. It is described in RFC 2671.
Standards
● RFC 882 Concepts and Facilities (Deprecated by RFC 1034)
● RFC 883 Domain Names: Implementation specification (Deprecated by RFC 1035)
● RFC 920 Specified original TLDs: .arpa, .com, .edu, .org, .gov, .mil and two-character country
codes
● RFC 1032 Domain administrators guide
● RFC 1033 Domain administrators operations guide
● RFC 1034 Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities.
● RFC 1035 Domain Names - Implementation and Specification
● RFC 1101 DNS Encodings of Network Names and Other Types
● RFC 1123 Requirements for Internet Hosts -- Application and Support
● RFC 1183 New DNS RR Definitions
● RFC 1706 DNS NSAP Resource Records
● RFC 1876 Location Information in the DNS (LOC)
● RFC 1886 DNS Extensions to support IP version 6
● RFC 1912 Common DNS Operational and Configuration Errors
● RFC 1995 Incremental Zone Transfer in DNS
● RFC 1996 A Mechanism for Prompt Notification of Zone Changes (DNS NOTIFY)
● RFC 2136 Dynamic Updates in the domain name system (DNS UPDATE)
● RFC 2181 Clarifications to the DNS Specification
● RFC 2182 Selection and Operation of Secondary DNS Servers
● RFC 2308 Negative Caching of DNS Queries (DNS NCACHE)
● RFC 2317 Classless IN-ADDR.ARPA delegation
● RFC 2671 Extension Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS0)
● RFC 2672 Non-Terminal DNS Name Redirection (DNAME record)
● RFC 2782 A DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)
● RFC 2845 Secret Key Transaction Authentication for DNS (TSIG)
● RFC 2874 DNS Extensions to Support IPv6 Address Aggregation and Renumbering
● RFC 3403 Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) (NAPTR records)
● RFC 3696 Application Techniques for Checking and Transformation of Names
● RFC 4398 Storing Certificates in the Domain Name System
● RFC 4408 Sender Policy Framework (SPF) (SPF records)
Types of DNS records

Important categories of data stored in DNS include the following:
● An A record or address record maps a hostname to a 32-bit IPv4 address.

● An AAAA record or IPv6 address record maps a hostname to a 128-bit IPv6 address.
● A CNAME record or canonical name record is an alias of one name to another. The A record
to which the alias points can be either local or remote - on a foreign name server. This is useful
when running multiple services (like an FTP and a webserver) from a single IP address. Each
service can then have its own entry in DNS (like ftp.example.com. and www.example.
com.)
● An MX record or mail exchange record maps a domain name to a list of mail exchange servers
for that domain.
● A PTR record or pointer record maps an IPv4 address to the canonical name for that host.
Setting up a PTR record for a hostname in the in-addr.arpa. domain that corresponds to an
IP address implements reverse DNS lookup for that address. For example (at the time of writing),
www.icann.net has the IP address 192.0.34.164, but a PTR record maps 164.34.0.192.
in-addr.arpa to its canonical name, referrals.icann.org.
● An NS record or name server record maps a domain name to a list of DNS servers authoritative
for that domain. Delegations depend on NS records.
● An SOA record or start of authority record specifies the DNS server providing authoritative
information about an Internet domain, the email of the domain administrator, the domain serial
number, and several timers relating to refreshing the zone.
● An SRV record is a generalized service location record.
● A TXT record allows an administrator to insert arbitrary text into a DNS record. For example,
this record is used to implement the Sender Policy Framework and DomainKeys specifications.
● NAPTR records ("Naming Authority Pointer") are a newer type of DNS record that support
regular expression based rewriting.
Other types of records simply provide information (for example, a LOC record gives the physical
location of a host), or experimental data (for example, a WKS record gives a list of servers offering
some well known service such as HTTP or POP3 for a domain).
When sent over the internet, all records use the common format specified in RFC 1035 shown below.
RR (Resource Record) Fields

Field Description Length (Octets)
NAME Name of the node to which this record pertains. (variable)
TYPE Type of RR. For example, MX is type 15. 2
CLASS Class code. 2
TTL Signed time in seconds that RR stays valid. 4
RDLENGTH Length of RDATA field. 2
RDATA Additional RR-specific data. (variable)
For a complete list of DNS Record types consult IANA DNS Parameters.
Internationalized domain names

Main article: Internationalized domain name
While domain names technically have no restrictions on the characters they use and can include non-
ASCII characters, the same is not true for host names.[3] Host names are the names most people see and
use for things like e-mail and web browsing. Host names are restricted to a small subset of the ASCII
character set that includes the Roman alphabet in upper and lower case, the digits 0 through 9, the dot,
and the hyphen. (See RFC 3696 section 2 for details.) This prevented the representation of names and
words of many languages natively. ICANN has approved the Punycode-based IDNA system, which
maps Unicode strings into the valid DNS character set, as a workaround to this issue. Some registries
have adopted IDNA.
Security issues
DNS was not originally designed with security in mind, and thus has a number of security issues. DNS
responses are traditionally not cryptographically signed, leading to many attack possibilities; DNSSEC
modifies DNS to add support for cryptographically signed responses. There are various extensions to
support securing zone transfer information as well.
Even with encryption it still doesn't prevent the possibility that a DNS server could become infected
with a virus (or for that matter a disgruntled employee) that would cause IP addresses of that server to be
redirected to a malicious address with a long TTL. This could have far reaching impact to potentially
millions of internet users if busy DNS servers cache the bad IP data. This would require manual purging
of all affected DNS caches as required by the long TTL (up to 68 years).
Some domain names can spoof other, similar-looking domain names. For example, "paypal.com" and
"paypa1.com" are different names, yet users may be unable to tell the difference when the user's
typeface (font) does not clearly differentiate the letter l and the number 1. This problem is much more
serious in systems that support internationalized domain names, since many characters that are different,
from the point of view of ISO 10646, appear identical on typical computer screens.
Legal users of domains
Registrant
Most of the NICs in the world receive an annual fee from a legal user in order for the legal user to utilize
the domain name (i.e. a sort of a leasing agreement exists, subject to the registry's terms and conditions).
Depending on the various naming convention of the registries, legal users become commonly known as
"registrants" or as "domain holders".
ICANN holds a complete list of domain registries in the world. One can find the legal user of a domain
name by looking in the WHOIS database held by most domain registries.
For most of the more than 240 country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), the domain registries hold the
authoritative WHOIS (Registrant, name servers, expiry dates, etc.). For instance, DENIC, Germany
NIC, holds the authoritative WHOIS to a .DE domain name.
However, some domain registries, such as for .COM, .ORG, .INFO, etc., use a registry-registrar model.
There are hundreds of Domain Name Registrars that actually perform the domain name registration with
the end user (see lists at ICANN or VeriSign). By using this method of distribution, the registry only has
to manage the relationship with the registrar, and the registrar maintains the relationship with the end
users, or 'registrants'. For .COM, .NET domain names, the domain registries, VeriSign holds a basic
WHOIS (registrar and name servers, etc.). One can find the detailed WHOIS (registrant, name servers,
expiry dates, etc.) at the registrars.
Since about 2001, most gTLD registries (.ORG, .BIZ, .INFO) have adopted a so-called "thick" registry
approach, i.e. keeping the authoritative WHOIS with the various registries instead of the registrars.
Administrative contact
A registrant usually designates an administrative contact to manage the domain name. In practice, the
administrative contact usually has the most immediate power over a domain. Management functions
delegated to the administrative contacts may include (for example):
● the obligation to conform to the requirements of the domain registry in order to retain the right to
use a domain name
● authorization to update the physical address, e-mail address and telephone number etc. in WHOIS
Technical contact
A technical contact manages the name servers of a domain name. The many functions of a technical
contact include:
● making sure the configurations of the domain name conforms to the requirements of the domain
registry
● updating the domain zone
● providing the 24×7 functionality of the name servers (that leads to the accessibility of the domain
name)
Billing contact
The party whom a NIC invoices.
Name servers
Namely the authoritative name servers that host the domain name zone of a domain name.
Politics
Many investigators have voiced criticism of the methods currently used to control ownership of
domains. Critics commonly claim abuse by monopolies or near-monopolies, such as VeriSign, Inc.
Particularly noteworthy was the VeriSign Site Finder system which redirected all unregistered .com and .
net domains to a VeriSign webpage. Despite widespread criticism, VeriSign only reluctantly removed it
after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) threatened to revoke its
contract to administer the root name servers.
There is also significant disquiet regarding the United States' political influence over ICANN. This was
a significant issue in the attempt to create a .xxx top-level domain and sparked greater interest in
alternative DNS roots that would be beyond the control of any single country.
Truth in Domain Names Act

In the United States, the "Truth in Domain Names Act" (actually the "Anticybersquatting Consumer
Protection Act"), in combination with the PROTECT Act, forbids the use of a misleading domain name
with the intention of attracting people into viewing a visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct on the
Internet.
References
1. ^ How Internet Explorer uses the cache for DNS host entries. Microsoft (2004).
2. ^ Mockapetris, P (November, 1987). RFC1035: Domain Names - Implementation and
Specification.
3. ^ The term host name is here being used to mean an FQDN for a host, such as eg. en.
wikipedia.org., and not just (to use the same example) en .
While most domain names do indeed designate hosts, some domain name DNS entries may not.
In this sense, a (FQDN) hostname is a type of domain name, but not all domain names are actual
host names. Cf. this host name vs domain name explanation from the DNS OP IETF Working
Group.
External links
● dmoz.org overview of web-based DNS tools
● DNS Complexity, Paul Vixie, ACM Queue
● Open Source Guide - DNS for Rocket Scientists, an on-line technical book for further reading
Domaining
Home | Domain name speculation | Name generator | Domain parking | Domain hack | Typosquatting
| Domain sniping | Domain hijacking | Cybersquatting
| Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy | List of most popular given names
Domaining is the business of buying, selling, developing and monetizing Internet domain names. Such
domain name portfolios often include cleverly chosen and highly marketable generic domain names, or
domains whose registrations had lapsed yet still retain reasonable traffic. There is sometimes no actual
intent to use any of the domain names with the exception of generating advertising revenue through
domain parking. Domain names are the addresses of the web and come in a wide variety of extensions (.
com being the most popular).
Domainers
Domainers are individuals whose profession is the accumulation and dealing of generic internet domain
names. Although controversially compared to cybersquatters and ticket scalpers, Domainers claim to
differentiate and legitimize themselves by avoiding trademarked names and potentially contentious
domain names, and refraining from typosquatting. They consider their conduct in buying, selling, and
developing domain names to be in the same spirit as real estate investing. Domainers generate revenue
via domain parking, through the resale of domain names and by developing domain names into fully
[1]
functioning websites. Domainers are also sometimes referred to as domain investors and commercial
registrants.
As of December 2006 there are an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 individuals globally who make buying and
selling domain names a part of their business. USA Today reported that many Domainers prefer to
[2]
remain anonymous due to the competitive and controversial nature of their business.
A report in USA Today states that known sales of 5,851 domain names generated $29 million in 2005,
[3]
compared with known sales of 3,813 names for $15 million in 2004. Like the tip of an iceberg, the
[4]
number of reported sales is estimated to be 5-10% of the broader secondary domain resale market.
References
1. ^ http://www.forbes.com/technology/2006/05/23/internet-reit-domain_cx_rr_0523cyber.html
2. ^ http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-05-09-domainers_x.htm?POE=TECISVA
3. ^ http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-05-09-domainers_x.htm?POE=TECISVA
4. ^ http://frankschilling.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/03/the_secondary_m.html
External links
● CNN: Masters of their domains
● Newsweek: Internet for Sale
● Extensive coverage at CircleID
● Domain Name Journal
● Domainfest
● T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Conference
● Domain Roundtable Conference
● Domaining
Website
Home | Uniform Resource Locator
A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos and other
digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell
phone or a LAN.
A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML, that is almost always accessible via HTTP, a
protocol that transfers information from the Web server to display in the user's Web browser.
All publicly accessible websites are seen collectively as constituting the "World Wide Web".
The pages of websites can usually be accessed from a common root URL called the homepage, and
usually reside on the same physical server. The URLs of the pages organize them into a hierarchy,
although the hyperlinks between them control how the reader perceives the overall structure and how the
traffic flows between the different parts of the sites.
Some websites require a subscription to access some or all of their content. Examples of subscription
sites include many business sites, parts of many news sites, academic journal sites, gaming sites,
message boards, Web-based e-mail, services, social networking website, and sites providing real-time
stock market data.
As of March 2007 there are over 8 billion web pages in total on the World Wide Web. - Source http://
www.google.co.uk/intl/en/help/features.html
History
The first on-line website appeared in 1991. On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide
Web would be free to anyone.[1] A copy of the original first Web page, created by Tim Berners-Lee, is
kept here.
Overview
Organized by function a website may be
● a personal website
● a business website
● a government website or
● a non-government website
● a non-profit organization website or blog
It could be the work of an individual, a business or other organization and is typically dedicated to some
particular topic or purpose. Any website can contain a hyperlink to any other website, so the distinction
between individual sites, as perceived by the user, may sometimes be blurred.
Websites are written in, or dynamically converted to, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and are
accessed using a software program called a Web browser, also known as a HTTP client. Web pages can
be viewed or otherwise accessed from a range of computer-based and Internet-enabled devices of
various sizes, including desktop computers, laptop computers, PDAs and cell phones.
A website is hosted on a computer system known as a web server, also called an HTTP server, and these
terms can also refer to the software that runs on these system and that retrieves and delivers the Web
pages in response to requests from the website users. Apache is the most commonly used Web server
software (according to Netcraft statistics) and Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) is also
commonly used.
A static website is one that has web pages stored on the server in the same form as the user will view
them. They are edited using three broad categories of software:
● Text editors. such as Notepad or TextEdit, where the HTML is manipulated directly within the
editor program
● WYSIWYG editors. such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver, where the site
is edited using a GUI interface and the underlying HTML is generated automatically by the editor
software
● Template-based editors, such as Rapidweaver and iWeb, which allow users to quickly create and
upload websites to a web server without having to know anything about HTML, as they just pick
a suitable template from a palette and add pictures and text to it in a DTP-like fashion without
ever having to see any HTML code.
A dynamic website is one that has frequently changing information or collates information on the hop
each time a page is requested. For example, it would call various bits of information from a database and
put them together in a pre-defined format to present the reader with a coherent page. It interacts with
users in a variety of ways including by reading cookies recognizing users' previous history, session
variables, server side variables etc., or by using direct interaction (form elements, mouseovers, etc.). A
site can display the current state of a dialogue between users, monitor a changing situation, or provide
information in some way personalized to the requirements of the individual user.
There is a wide range of software systems, such as Java Server Pages (JSP), the PHP and Perl
programming languages, Active Server Pages (ASP) and ColdFusion (CFM) that are available to
generate dynamic Web systems and dynamic sites. Sites may also include content that is retrieved from
one or more databases or by using XML-based technologies such as RSS.
Static content may also be dynamically generated either periodically, or if certain conditions for
regeneration occur (cached) in order to avoid the performance loss of initiating the dynamic engine on a
per-user or per-connection basis.
Plugins are available to expand the features and abilities of Web browsers, which use them to show
active content, such as Flash, Shockwave or applets written in Java. Dynamic HTML also provides for
user interactivity and realtime element updating within Web pages (i.e., pages don't have to be loaded or
reloaded to effect any changes), mainly using the DOM and JavaScript, support which is built-in to most
modern Web browsers.
Websites as businesses
Turning a website into an income source is a common practice for web-developers and website owners.
There are several methods for creating a website business which fall into two broad categories.
1. Online Information Businesses
Some websites offer no products at all but provide free information with income coming from clicks the
visitors make on advertisements (see contextual ads). There is a wide range of monetizing used on such
sites and the sites themselves are actively traded and bought and sold as going concerns.
Guides have been published which explain how to create such a business. See links at bottom of page.
2. Online Shop Businesses
While most business websites serve as a shop window for brick and mortar businesses it is increasingly
the case that some websites are businesses in their own right. These websites are fully self-contained
businesses entities offering, for example, immediate downloads of retail software on payment of the
product's price via their shopping cart.
Guides have been published which explain how to create such a business. See links at bottom of page.
3. Online Services Businesses
It offers a lot of services in every field, such as, tourism, economic, politic, social welfare.
Spelling
As noted above, there are several different spellings for this term. Although "website" and "web site" are
commonly used (the former especially in British English), the Associated Press Stylebook, Reuters,
Microsoft, academia, book publishing, The Chicago Manual of Style, and dictionaries such as Merriam-
Webster use the two-word, initially capitalized spelling Web site. This is because "Web" is not a general
term but a shortened form of World Wide Web. As with many newly created terms, it may take some
time before a common spelling is finalized. (This controversy also applies to derivative terms such as
"Web master"/"webmaster" and "Web cam"/"webcam").
The Canadian Oxford Dictionary and the Canadian Press Stylebook list "website" and "web page" as the
preferred spellings. The Oxford English Dictionary began using "website" as its standardized form in
[2]
2004.
Bill Walsh, the copy chief of The Washington Post's national desk, and one of American English’s
foremost grammarians, argues for the two-word spelling with capital W in his books Lapsing into a
[3]
Comma and The Elephants of Style, and on his site, the Slot.
Way to Upload website and earn on click basis

Here are some guidelines to make a website for earning pupose.
Types of websites
There are many varieties of Web sites, each specializing in a particular type of content or use, and they
may be arbitrarily classified in any number of ways. A few such classifications might include:
● Affiliate: enabled portal that renders not only its custom CMS but also syndicated content from
other content providers for an agreed fee. There are usually three relationship tiers. Affiliate
Agencies (e.g., Commission Junction), Advertisers (e.g., Ebay) and consumer (e.g., Yahoo).
● Archive site: used to preserve valuable electronic content threatened with extinction. Two
examples are: Internet Archive, which since 1996 has preserved billions of old (and new) Web
pages; and Google Groups, which in early 2005 was archiving over 845,000,000 messages posted
to Usenet news/discussion groups.
● Blog (or web log) site: sites generally used to post online diaries which may include discussion
forums (e.g., blogger, Xanga).
● Corporate website: used to provide background information about a business, organization, or
service.
● Commerce site or eCommerce site: for purchasing goods, such as Amazon.com.
● Community site: a site where persons with similar interests communicate with each other, usually
by chat or message boards, such as MySpace.
● Database site: a site whose main use is the search and display of a specific database's content
such as the Internet Movie Database or the Political Graveyard.
Development site: a site whose purpose is to provide information and resources related to
software development, Web design and the like.
● Directory site: a site that contains varied contents which are divided into categories and
subcategories, such as Yahoo! directory, Google directory and Open Directory Project.
● Download site: strictly used for downloading electronic content, such as software, game demos
or computer wallpaper.
● Employment site: allows employers to post job requirements for a position or positions and
prospective employees to fill an application.
● Erotica websites: shows sexual videos and images.
● Game site: a site that is itself a game or "playground" where many people come to play, such as
MSN Games ,Pogo.com and Newgrounds.com.
● Geodomain refers to domain names that are the same as those of geographic entities, such as
cities and countries. For example, Richmond.com is the geodomain for Richmond, Virginia.
● Gripe site: a site devoted to the critique of a person, place, corporation, government, or institution.
● Humor site: satirizes, parodies or otherwise exists solely to amuse.
● Information site: contains content that is intended to inform visitors, but not necessarily for
commercial purposes, such as: RateMyProfessors.com, Free Internet Lexicon and Encyclopedia.
Most government, educational and non-profit institutions have an informational site.
● Java applet site: contains software to run over the Web as a Web application.
● Mirror (computing) site: A complete reproduction of a website.
● News site: similar to an information site, but dedicated to dispensing news and commentary.
● Personal homepage: run by an individual or a small group (such as a family) that contains
information or any content that the individual wishes to include.
● Phish site: a website created to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and
credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business (such as Social Security
Administration, PayPal) in an electronic communication. (see Phishing).
● Political site: A site on which people may voice political views.
● Pornography (porn) site: a site that shows pornographic images and videos.
● Rating site: A site on which people can praise or disparage what is featured (e.g. ratemyrack.
com).
● Review site: A site on which people can post reviews for products or services.
● Search engine site: a site that provides general information and is intended as a gateway or
lookup for other sites. A pure example is Google, and the most widely known extended type is
Yahoo!.
● Shock site: includes images or other material that is intended to be offensive to most viewers (e.g.
rotten.com).
● Warez: a site filled with illegal downloads.
● Web portal: a site that provides a starting point or a gateway to other resources on the Internet or
an intranet.
● Wiki site: a site which users collaboratively edit (such as Wikipedia).
Some websites may be included in one or more of these categories. For example, a business website may
promote the business's products, but may also host informative documents, such as white papers. There
are also numerous sub-categories to the ones listed above. For example, a porn site is a specific type of
eCommerce site or business site (that is, it is trying to sell memberships for access to its site). A fan site
may be a dedication from the owner to a particular celebrity.
Websites are constrained by architectural limits (e.g., the computing power dedicated to the website).
Very large websites, such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google employ many servers and load balancing
equipment such as Cisco Content Services Switches to distribute visitor loads over multiple computers
at multiple locations.
In January of 2007, Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company that has tracked Web growth since 1995,
reported that there were 106,875,138 Web sites with domain names and content on them in 2007,
compared to just 18,000 Web sites in August 1995.
Prizes
The Webby Awards are a set of awards presented to the world's "best" websites, a concept pioneered by
Best of the Web in 1994.
Notes and references

1. ^ Cailliau, Robert. A Little History of the World Wide Web.
2. ^ AskOxford: How should the term website be written in official documents and on the web?.
Oxford Dictionaries Online.
3. ^ The Slot—Sharp Points: Here We Go Again—Eeee!.
External links
● Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
● World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
● The Internet Society (ISOC)
License
Home | GNU Free Documentation License
Copyright © version 1.0 2006 by MultiMedia and Nicolae Sfetcu. Permission is granted to copy,
distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections,
with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license can be found in this
page, as well as at the GNU Free Documentation License.
This book, in all its versions (also those modified from third parties in italian, english or whichever other
language), for will of the authors, may be reproduced also integrally without violating any law in as
much as this book is released under the GNU Free Documentation License.
This book:
● May be modified partially or integrally creating manuals for companies, agencies or persons who
deal with formatting, changing either the diagram or the contents or the pagination.
● May be distributed either in its original or in modified form, or either in electronic or in paper
format from either field periodicals or not, Internet sites and whichever other medium.
● May be used as internal manual by companies, public or private agencies, or universities .
● May be used distributed by universities as a hand-out.
● May even be resold without having to recognize any type of royalty to the authors on the
condition that the purchasers be granted the freedom of making even integral copies, redistribute
or resell them.
Free content and software
This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Index
Home
Domaining Guide
● Domain name system

❍ Domain name
■ Top-level domain
■ Country code top-level domain
■ Generic top-level domain
■ .com
■ Sponsored top-level domain
■ List of Internet top-level domains
■ Proposed top-level domain
■ Pseudo top-level domain
■ Second-level domain
■ Single-letter second-level domains
❍ Hostname
❍ Fully qualified domain name
❍ Internationalized domain name
❍ Subdomain
❍ Domain name registry
■ Domain name registrar
■ Domain name drop list
■ Domain tasting
■ Reverse domain hijacking
■ Domain name warehousing
❍ WHOIS
● Domaining
❍ Domain name speculation
❍ Name generator
❍ Domain parking
❍ Domain hack
❍ Typosquatting
❍ Domain sniping
❍ Domain hijacking
❍ Cybersquatting
❍ Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy
❍ List of most popular given names
● Website
❍ Uniform Resource Locator
● License
❍ GNU Free Documentation License
GNU Free Documentation License
Home | Up
GNU Free Documentation License
Version 1.2, November 2002
Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

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Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a
particular numbered version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of
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Domain name
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| Sponsored top-level domain | List of Internet top-level domains | Proposed top-level domain
| Pseudo top-level domain | Second-level domain
The term domain name has multiple related meanings:
● A name that identifies a computer or computers on the internet. These names appear as a
component of a Web site's URL, e.g. wikipedia.org. This type of domain name is also called a
hostname.
● The product that domain name registrars provide to their customers. These names are often called
registered domain names.
● Names used for other purposes in the Domain Name System (DNS), for example the special
name which follows the @ sign in an email address, or the Top-level domains like .com, or the
names used by the Session Initiation Protocol (VoIP), or DomainKeys.
They are sometimes colloquially (and incorrectly) referred to by marketers as "web addresses".
This article will primarily discuss registered domain names. See the Domain Name System article for
technical discussions about general domain names and the hostname article for further information about
the most common type of domain name.
Overview
The most common types of domain names are hostnames that provide more memorable names to stand
in for numeric IP addresses. They allow for any service to move to a different location in the topology of
the Internet (or an intranet), which would then have a different IP address.
By allowing the use of unique alphabetical addresses instead of numeric ones, domain names allow
Internet users to more easily find and communicate with web sites and other server-based services. The
flexibility of the domain name system allows multiple IP addresses to be assigned to a single domain
name, or multiple domain names to be assigned to a single IP address. This means that one server may
have multiple roles (such as hosting multiple independent Web sites), or that one role can be spread
among many servers. One IP address can also be assigned to several servers, as used in anycast and
hijacked IP space.
Hostnames are restricted to the ASCII letters "a" through "z" (case-insensitive), the digits "0" through
"9", and the hyphen, with some other restrictions. Registrars restrict the domains to valid hostnames,
since, otherwise, they would be useless. The Internationalized domain name (IDN) system has been
developed to bypass the restrictions on character allowances in hostnames, making it easier for users of
non-english alphabets to use the Internet. The underscore character is frequently used to ensure that a
domain name is not recognized as a hostname, for example with the use of SRV records, although some
older systems, such as NetBIOS did allow it. Due to confusion and other reasons, domain names with
underscores in them are sometimes used where hostnames are required.
Examples
The following example illustrates the difference between a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and a
domain name:
URL: http://www.example.net/index.html
Domain name: www.example.net
Registered domain name: example.net
As a general rule, the IP address and the server name are interchangeable. For most Internet services, the
server will not have any way to know which was used. However, the explosion of interest in the Web
means that there are far more Web sites than servers. To accommodate this, the hypertext transfer
protocol (HTTP) specifies that the client tells the server which name is being used. This way, one server
with one IP address can provide different sites for different domain names. This feature goes under the
name virtual hosting and is commonly used by Web hosts.
For example, as referenced in RFC 2606 (Reserved Top Level DNS Names), the server at IP address
192.0.34.166 handles all of the following sites:
example.com
www.example.com
example.net
www.example.net
example.org
www.example.org
When a request is made, the data corresponding to the hostname requested is served to the user.
Top-level domains
Every domain name ends in a top-level domain (TLD) name, which is always either one of a small list
of generic names (three or more characters), or a two-character territory code based on ISO-3166 (there
are few exceptions and new codes are integrated case by case). Top-level domains are sometimes also
called first-level domains.
The generic top-level domain (gTLD) extensions are:
v•d•e Generic top-level domains [show]

Unsponsored .biz .com .edu .gov .info .int .mil .name .net .org
Sponsored .aero .asia .cat .coop .jobs .mobi .museum .pro .tel .travel
Infrastructure .arpa .root
Proposed .berlin .bzh .cym .gal .geo .kid .kids .lat .mail .nyc .post .sco .web .xxx
Deleted/retired .nato
Reserved .example .invalid .localhost .test
Pseudo-domains .bitnet .csnet .ip .local .onion .uucp
Unofficial
See also: Country code top-level domains
The country code top-level domain (ccTLD) extensions are:
Country code top-level domains

Active: .ac .ad .ae .af .ag .ai .al .am .an .ao .aq .ar .as .at .au .aw .ax .az .ba .bb .bd .be .bf .
bg .bh .bi .bj .bm .bn .bo .br .bs .bt .bw .by .bz .ca .cc .cd .cf .cg .ch .ci .ck .cl .cm .cn .co
.cr .cu .cv .cx .cy .cz .de .dj .dk .dm .do .dz .ec .ee .eg .er .es .et .eu .fi .fj .fk .fm .fo .fr .
ga .gd .ge .gf .gg .gh .gi .gl .gm .gn .gp .gq .gr .gs .gt .gu .gw .gy .hk .hm .hn .hr .ht .hu .
id .ie .il .im .in .io .iq .ir .is .it .je .jm .jo .jp .ke .kg .kh .ki .km .kn .kr .kw .ky .kz .la .lb .
lc .li .lk .lr .ls .lt .lu .lv .ly .ma .mc .md .mg .mh .mk .ml .mm .mn .mo .mp .mq .mr .ms .
mt .mu .mv .mw .mx .my .mz .na .nc .ne .nf .ng .ni .nl .no .np .nr .nu .nz .om .pa .pe .pf .
pg .ph .pk .pl .pn .pr .ps .pt .pw .py .qa .re .ro .ru .rw .sa .sb .sc .sd .se .sg .sh .si .sk .sl .
sm .sn .sr .st .sv .sy .sz .tc .td .tf .tg .th .tj .tk .tl .tm .tn .to .tr .tt .tv .tw .tz .ua .ug .uk .us
.uy .uz .va .vc .ve .vg .vi .vn .vu .wf .ws .ye .yu .za .zm .zw
Reserved/unassigned: .eh .kp .me .rs .um Allocated/unused: .bv .gb .pm .sj .so .yt Phaseout: .
su .tp Deleted/retired: .bu .cs .dd .zr
See also: Generic top-level domains
Other-level domains
In addition to the top-level domains, there are second-level domain (SLD) names. These are the names
directly to the left of .com, .net, and the other top-level domains. As an example, in the domain en.
wikipedia.org, "wikipedia" is the second-level domain.
On the next level are third-level domains. These domains are immediately to the left of a second-level
domain. In the en.wikipedia.org example, "en" is a third-level domain. There can be fourth and fifth
level domains and so on, with virtually no limitation. An example of a working domain with five levels
is www.sos.state.oh.us. Each level is separated by a dot or period symbol between them.
Domains of third or higher level are also known as subdomains, though this term technically applies to a
domain of any level, since even a top-level domain is a "subdomain" of the "root" domain (a "zeroth-
level" domain that is designated by a dot alone).
Traditionally, the second level domain was the name of the company or the name used on the internet.
The third level was commonly used to designate a particular host server. Therefore, ftp.wikipedia.org
might be an FTP server, www.wikipedia.org would be a World Wide Web Server, and mail.wikipedia.
org could be an email server. Modern technology now allows multiple servers to serve a single
subdomain, or multiple protocols or domains to be served by a single computer. Therefore, subdomains
may or may not have any real purpose.
Official assignment
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has overall responsibility for
managing the DNS. It controls the root domain, delegating control over each top-level domain to a
domain name registry. For ccTLDs, the domain registry is typically controlled by the government of that
country. ICANN has a consultation role in these domain registries but is in no position to regulate the
terms and conditions of how a domain name is allocated or who allocates it in each of these country
level domain registries. On the other hand, generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are governed directly
under ICANN which means all terms and conditions are defined by ICANN with the cooperation of the
gTLD registries.
Domain names which are theoretically leased can be considered in the same way as real estate, due to a
significant impact on online brand building, advertising, search engine optimization, etc.
A few companies have offered low-cost, below-cost or even free domain registrations, with a variety of
models adopted to recoup the costs to the provider. These usually require that domains are hosted on
their site in a framework or portal, with advertising wrapped around the user's content, revenue from
which allows the provider to recoup the costs. When the DNS was new, domain registrations were free.
A domain owner can generally give away or sell infinite subdomains of their domain, e.g. the owner of
example.edu could provide domains that are subdomains, such as foo.example.edu and foo.bar.example.
edu.
Uses and abuses
As domain names became attractive to marketers, rather than just the technical audience for which they
were originally intended, they began to be used in manners that in many cases did not fit in their
intended structure. As originally planned, the structure of domain names followed a strict hierarchy in
which the top level domain indicated the type of organization (commercial, governmental, etc.), and
addresses would be nested down to third, fourth, or further levels to express complex structures, where,
for instance, branches, departments, and subsidiaries of a parent organization would have addresses
which were subdomains of the parent domain. Also, hostnames were intended to correspond to actual
physical machines on the network, generally with only one name per machine.
However, once the World Wide Web became popular, site operators frequently wished to have
memorable addresses, regardless of whether they fit properly in the structure; thus, since the .com
domain was the most popular and memorable, even noncommercial sites would often get addresses
under it, and sites of all sorts wished to have second-level domain registrations even if they were parts of
a larger entity where a logical subdomain would have made sense (e.g., abcnews.com instead of news.
abc.com). A Web site found at http://www.example.org/ will often be advertised without the "http://",
and in most cases can be reached by just entering "example.org" into a Web browser. In the case of a .
com, the Web site can sometimes be reached by just entering "example" (depending on browser versions
and configuration settings, which vary in how they interpret incomplete addresses).
The popularity of domain names also led to uses which were regarded as abusive by established
companies with trademark rights; this was known as cybersquatting, in which somebody took a name
that resembled a trademark in order to profit from traffic to that address. To combat this, various laws
and policies were enacted to allow abusive registrations to be forcibly transferred, but these were
sometimes themselves abused by overzealous companies committing reverse domain hijacking against
domain users who had legitimate grounds to hold their names, such as their being generic words as well
as trademarks in a particular context, or their use in the context of fan or protest sites with free speech
rights of their own.
Laws that specifically address domain name conflicts include the Anticybersquatting Consumer
Protection Act in the United States and the Trademarks Act, 1999, in India. Alternatively, domain
registrants are bound by contract under the UDRP to comply with mandatory arbitration proceedings
should someone challenge their ownership of the domain name.
Generic domain names — problems arising out of unregulated name

selection
Within a particular top-level domain, parties are generally free to select an unallocated domain name as
their own on a first come, first served basis, resulting in Harris's lament, all the good ones are taken. For
generic or commonly used names, this may sometimes lead to the use of a domain name which is
inaccurate or misleading. This problem can be seen with regard to the ownership or control of domain
names for a generic product or service.
By way of illustration, there has been tremendous growth in the number and size of literary festivals
around the world in recent years. In this context, currently a generic domain name such as literary.org is
available to the first literary festival organisation which is able to obtain registration, even if the festival
in question is very young or obscure. Some critics would argue that there is greater amenity in reserving
such domain names for the use of, for example, a regional or umbrella grouping of festivals. Related
issues may also arise in relation to non-commercial domain names.
Unconventional domain names

Due to the rarity of one-word dot-com domain names, many unconventional domain names, domain
hacks, have been gaining popularity. They make use of the top-level domain as an integral part of the
Web site's title. Two popular domain hack Web sites are del.icio.us and blo.gs, which spell out
"delicious" and "blogs", respectively.
Unconventional domain names are also used to create unconventional email addresses. Non-working
examples that spell 'James' are j@m.es and j@mes.com, which use the domain names m.es (of
Spain's .es) and mes.com, respectively.
Commercial resale of domain names

An economic effect of the widespread usage of domain names has been the resale market (after-market)
for generic domain names that has sprung up in the last decade. Certain domains, especially those
related to business, gambling, pornography, and other commercially lucrative fields of digital world
trade have become very much in demand to corporations and entrepreneurs due to their importance in
attracting clients.
The most expensive Internet domain name to date, according to Guinness World Records, is business.
com which was resold in 1999 for $7.5 million, but this was $7.5 million in stock options, not in cash.
The stock was later redeemed for $2 million, "So it was $2 million."[1]. There are disputes about the
high values of domain names claimed and the actual cash prices of many sales such Business.com.
Another high-priced domain name, sex.com, was stolen from its rightful owner by means of a forged
transfer instruction via fax. During the height of the dot-com era, the domain was earning millions of
dollars per month in advertising revenue from the large influx of visitors that arrived daily. The sex.com
sale may have never been final as the domain is still with the previous owner. Also, that sale was not just
a domain but an income stream, a web site, a domain name with customers and advertisers, etc. Two
long-running U.S. lawsuits resulted, one against the thief and one against the domain registrar VeriSign
[1]. In one of the cases, Kremen v. Network Solutions, the court found in favor of the plaintiff, leading to
an unprecedented ruling that classified domain names as property, granting them the same legal
protections. In 1999, Microsoft traded the name Bob.com with internet entrepreneur Bob Kerstein for
the name Windows2000.com which was the name of their new operating system. [2]
One of the reasons for the value of domain names is that even without advertising or marketing, they
attract clients seeking services and products who simply type in the generic name. Furthermore, generic
domain names such as movies.com or Books.com are extremely easy for potential customers to
remember, increasing the probability that they become repeat customers or regular clients.
Although the current domain market is nowhere as strong as it was during the dot-com heyday, it
remains strong and is currently experiencing solid growth again. [3] Annually tens of millions of dollars
change hands due to the resale of domains. Large numbers of registered domain names lapse and are
deleted each year. On average 25,000 domain names drop (are deleted) every day.
It is very important to remember that a domain (name, address) must be valued separately from the
website (content, revenue) that it is used for. The high prices have usually been paid for the revenue that
was generated from the website at the domain's address (url.). The intrinsic value of a domain is the
registration fee. There is no such a thing as a current market value for a domain: It just takes what
somebody pays. The Fair Market Value of a domain can be anything from the registration fee: The
lowest known past selling price, the highest known past selling, price, the most recent selling price, or
just any past selling price and any of these (or any sum resp. division etc.) is usually added to the current
or expected revenue from the web content (advertising, sales, etc.). Domain (name + ext.) should not be
mixed with website (content + revenue). The estimation by appraisers are always the addition of what
they would like that a domain is worth together with the effective/expected/desired revenue from the
web content. Some people put value on the length of the SLD (name) and other people prefer description
capability, but the shorter a SLD is, the less descriptive it can be. Also, if short is crucial, then the TLD
(extension) should be short too. It is less realistic to get a domain like LL.travel or LL.mobi than a
domain travel.LL or mobi.LL. This illustrates the relativity of domain value estimation. It can be safely
put that the revenue af a web (content) can be easily stated, but that the value of a domain (SLD.TLD
aka name.ext) is a matter of opinions and preferences. In the end, however, any sale depend of the
estimates by the domain seller and the domain buyer.
People who buy and sell domain names are known as domainers. People who sell value estimation
services are known as appraisers.
According to Guiness Book of World Records and MSNBC, the most expensive domain name sales on
record as of 2004 were: Business.com for $7.5 million in December 1999, AsSeenOnTv.com for $5.1
million in January 2000, Altavista.com for $3.3 million in August 1998, Wine.com for $2.9 million in
September 1999, CreditCards.com for $2.75 million in July 2004, and Autos.com for $2.2 million in
December 1999. [4]
Domain name confusion

Intercapping is often used to clarify a domain name. However, DNS is case-insensitive, and some names
may be misinterpreted when converted to lowercase. For example: Who Represents, a database of artists
and agents, chose whorepresents.com; a therapists' network thought therapistfinder.com
looked good; and another website operating as of October 2006, is penisland.net a website for Pen
Island, a site that claims to be an online pen vendor, but exists primarily as a joke, as it has no products
for sale. Other examples include cummingfirst.com, website of the Cumming First United Church in
Cumming, GA and powergenitalia.com, a website for an Italian Power Generator company. In such
situations, the proper wording can be clarified by use of hyphens. For instance, Experts Exchange, the
programmers' site, for a long time used expertsexchange.com, but ultimately changed the name to
experts-exchange.com.
Leo Stoller threatened to sue the owners of StealThisEmail.com on the basis that, when read as
stealthisemail.com, it infringed on claimed trademark rights to the word "stealth". [5].
References
1. ^ [Steven] (2006-10-16). Sticking to The Business (HTML). Newsweek. The Washington Post
Company.
See also
● Domaining
● Domain hack
● Domain hijacking
● Domain tasting, also known as domain kiting
● Domain name warehousing
● Fully qualified domain name
● Internationalized domain name
● Name generator
● Uniform Resource Locator
● Web site
External links
● RFC 1034, Domain Names—Concepts and Facilities, an Internet Protocol Standard.
● ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
● UDRP, Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy.
● Internic.net, public information regarding Internet domain name registration services.
● IANA generic TLD
● IANA Two letter Country Code TLD
Home | Up | Domain name | Hostname | Fully qualified domain name | Internationalized domain name
Hostname
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A hostname (occasionally also, a sitename) is the unique name by which a network-attached device
(which could consist of a computer, file server, network storage device, fax machine, copier, cable
modem, etc.) is known on a network. The hostname is used to identify a particular host in various forms
of electronic communication such as the World Wide Web, e-mail or Usenet.
On the Internet, the terms "hostname" and "domain name" are often used interchangeably, but there are
subtle technical differences between them.
Overview
Hostnames are used by various naming systems, NIS, DNS, SMB, etc., and so the meaning of the word
hostname will vary depending on naming system in question, which in turn varies by type of network. A
hostname meaningful to a Microsoft NetBIOS workgroup may be an invalid Internet hostname. When
presented with a hostname and no context, it is usually safe to assume that the network is the Internet
and DNS is the hostname's naming system.
Host names are typically used in an administrative capacity and may appear in computer browser lists,
active directory lists, IP address to hostname resolutions, email headers, etc. They are human-readable
nick-names, which ultimately correspond to unique network hardware MAC addresses. In some cases
the host name may contain embedded domain names and/or locations, non-dotted IP addresses, etc.
On a simple local area network, a hostname is usually a single word: for instance, an organization's CVS
server might be named "cvs" or "server-1".
Internet hostnames
On the Internet, a hostname is a domain name assigned to the host. This is usually a combination of the
host's local name with its parent domain's name. For example, "en.wikipedia.org" consists of a hostname
("en") and the domain name "wikipedia.org". This kind of hostname is translated into an IP address via
the local hosts file, or the Domain Name System (DNS) resolver. It is possible for a single host to have
several hostnames; but generally the operating system of the host prefers to have one hostname that the
host uses for itself.
Any domain name can also be hostname, as long as the restrictions mentioned below are followed. So,
for example, both "en.wikimedia.org" and "wikimedia.org" are hostnames because they both have IP
addresses assigned to them. The domain name "pmtpa.wikimedia.org" is not a hostname since it does
not have an IP address, but "rr.pmtpa.wikimedia.org" is a hostname. All hostnames are domain names,
but not all domain names are hostnames.
Restrictions on valid host names
[1]
Hostnames, like all domain names , are made up of a series of "labels", with each label being separated
by a dot. Each label must be between 1 and 63 characters long, and there is a maximum of 255
characters when all labels are combined.
Unlike domain names, hostname labels can only be made up of the ASCII letters 'a' through 'z' (case-
insensitive), the digits '0' through '9', and the hyphen. Labels can not start nor end with a hyphen. Special
characters other than the hyphen (and the dot between labels) are not allowed, although they are
sometimes used anyway. Underscore characters are commonly used by Windows systems but according
to RFC 952 they are not allowed and several systems, such as DomainKeys and the SRV record
deliberately use the underscore to make sure their special domain names are not confused with a
hostname. Since some systems will check to make sure that hostnames contain only valid characters and
others do not, the use of the invalid characters such as the underscore has caused many subtle problems
in systems that connect to the wider world.
So, the hostname "en.wikipedia.org" is made up of the DNS labels "en", "wikipedia" and "org". Labels
such as "2600" and "3com" can be used in hostnames, but "-hi-" and "*hi*" are invalid.
A hostname is considered to be a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) if all the labels up to and
including the top-level domain name (TLD) are specified. Depending on the system, an unqualified
hostname such as "compsci" or "wikipedia" may be combined with default domain names in order to
determine the fully qualified domain name. So, a student at Harvard may be able to send mail to
"joe@compsci" and have it sent to compsci.harvard.edu.
Choosing host names
General guidelines on choosing a good hostnames are outlined in RFC 1178. The folklore interest of
hostnames stems from the creativity and humour they often display. Interpreting a sitename is not unlike
interpreting a vanity licence plate; one has to mentally unpack it, allowing for mono-case and length
restrictions and the lack of whitespace. Hacker tradition deprecates dull, institutional-sounding names in
favour of punchy, humorous, and clever coinages (except that it is considered appropriate for the official
public gateway machine of an organisation to bear the organisation's name or acronym). Mythological
references, cartoon characters, animal names, and allusions to sci-fi or fantasy literature are probably the
most popular sources for sitenames (in roughly descending order). The obligatory comment is Harris's
lament: "All the good ones are taken!"
It is often possible to guess a hostname for a particular institution. This is useful if you want to know if
they operate network services like anonymous FTP, World-Wide Web or finger. First try the institution's
name or obvious abbreviations thereof, with the appropriate domain appended, e.g. "mit.edu". If this
fails, prepend "ftp." or "www." as appropriate, e.g. "www.data-io.com". You can use the ping command
as a quick way to test whether a hostname is valid.
Notes and references

1. ^ Host name vs domain name explanation from the DNS OP IETF Working Group
External links
● RFC 952 - "DoD Internet host table specification."
● RFC 1034 - "DOMAIN NAMES - CONCEPTS AND FACILITIES" (In particular, section 3.5)
● RFC 1035 - "DOMAIN NAMES - IMPLEMENTATION AND SPECIFICATION" (In
particular, section 2.3.1)
● RFC 1123 - "Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application and Support."
● RFC 1178 - "Choosing a Name for Your Computer"
● RFC 3696 - "Application Techniques for Checking and Transformation of Names"
● web-based tools working with hostnames at the Open Directory Project
This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is
licensed under the GFDL.
Fully qualified domain name
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A fully qualified domain name (or FQDN) is an unambiguous domain name that specifies the node's
position in the DNS tree hierarchy absolutely. To distinguish an FQDN from a regular domain name, a
trailing period is added. ex: somehost.example.com. An FQDN differs from a regular domain name by
its absoluteness; a suffix will not be added.
For example, given a device with a hostname of "myhost" and a domain name of "example.com", the
fully qualified domain name is "myhost.example.com.". It therefore uniquely defines the device —
whilst there might be many hosts in the world called "myhost", there can only be one "myhost.example.
com.".
Notice that there is a dot at the very end of the domain name, i.e. it ends ".com." and not ".com" — this
indicates that the name is an FQDN. For example "myhost.bar.com" could be ambiguous, because it
could be the prefix of a longer domain name such as "myhost.bar.com.au", whereas "myhost.bar.com."
is a fully qualified domain name. Technically, the dot comes before the empty label indicating the root
of the Domain Name System hierarchy, and so an FQDN is sometimes called a rooted domain name. In
practice, the dot is almost always omitted in everyday applications, making such domain references
technically ambiguous.
The maximum permitted length of an FQDN is 255 bytes, with an additional restriction to 63 bytes for
each label within the domain name. The syntax of domain names is discussed in various RFCs — RFC
1035, RFC 1123 and RFC 2181. Any binary string can be used as the label of any resource record; a
common misconception is that names are limited to a subset of ASCII characters.
Internationalized domain names expand the character repertoire of domain names to include non-ASCII
characters, by encoding Unicode characters into byte strings within the normal FQDN character set. As a
result, the character length limits of internationalized domain names are content-dependent.
Use in URLs and on the Web

A FQDN is not the same as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) as it lacks the protocol name to be used
in communication with the host. A URL always starts with ":", and so includes the communication
protocol (like "http:", or "ftp:"), and includes information specific to the scheme, such as a directory
path, a filename and a TCP port number.
Sometimes FQDNs are specified by the user instead of the full URLs. An example would be typing
www.ebay.com into the URL bar of a browser. In this case, the protocol is assumed to be HTTP on
TCP port 80; nearly all web browsers use this as the default if not otherwise specified.
External links
● RFC 1035: Domain names: implementation and specification
● RFC 1123: Requirements for Internet Hosts - application and support
● RFC 2181: Clarifications to the DNS specification
Internationalized domain name
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An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that (potentially) contains non-
ASCII characters. Such domain names could contain letters with diacritics, as required by many
European languages, or characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. However, the
standard for domain names does not allow such characters, and much work has gone into finding a way
around this, either by changing the standard, or by agreeing on a way to convert internationalized
domain names into standard ASCII domain names while preserving the stability of the domain name
system.
IDN has, by the standards of the Internet, a long history; it was originally proposed in 1996 (by M.
Duerst) and implemented in 1998 (by T.W.Tan et al). After much debate and many competing
proposals, a system called Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) was adopted as
the chosen standard, and is currently, as of 2005, in the process of being rolled out.
In IDNA, the term internationalized domain name means specifically any domain name consisting only
of labels to which the IDNA ToASCII algorithm can be successfully applied. (For the meaning of 'label'
and 'ToASCII', see the section ToASCII and ToUnicode below.)
Internationalizing domain names in applications

Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) is a mechanism defined in 2003 for handling
internationalized domain names containing non-ASCII characters. Such domain names could not be
handled by the existing DNS and name resolver infrastructure. Rather than redesigning the existing DNS
infrastructure, it was decided that non-ASCII domain names should be converted to a suitable ASCII-
based form by web browsers and other user applications; IDNA specifies how this conversion is to be
done.
IDNA was designed for maximum backward compatibility with the existing DNS system, which was
designed for use with names using only a subset of the ASCII character set.
An IDNA-enabled application is able to convert between the restricted-ASCII and non-ASCII

representations of a domain, using the ASCII form in cases where it is needed (such as for DNS lookup),
but being able to present the more readable non-ASCII form to users. Applications that do not support
IDNA will not be able to handle domain names with non-ASCII characters, but will still be able to
access such domains if given the (usually rather cryptic) ASCII equivalent.
ICANN issued guidelines for the use of IDNA in June 2003, and it was already possible to register .jp
domains using this system in July 2003. Several other top-level domain registries started accepting
registrations in March 2004.
Mozilla 1.4, Netscape 7.1, Opera 7.11 and Safari are among the first applications to support IDNA. A
browser plugin is available for Internet Explorer 6 to provide IDN support. Internet Explorer 7.0 and
Windows Vista's URL APIs provide native support for IDN [1].
ToASCII and ToUnicode

The conversions between ASCII and non-ASCII forms of a domain name are accomplished by
algorithms called ToASCII and ToUnicode. These algorithms are not applied to the domain name as a
whole, but rather to individual labels. For example, if the domain name is www.example.com, then the
labels are www, example and com, and ToASCII or ToUnicode would be applied to each of these three
separately.
The details of these two algorithms are complex, and are specified in the RFCs linked at the end of this
article. The following gives an overview of their behaviour.
ToASCII leaves unchanged any ASCII label, but will fail if the label is unsuitable for DNS. If given a
label containing at least one non-ASCII character, ToASCII will apply the Nameprep algorithm (which
converts the label to lowercase and performs other normalization) and will then translate the result to
ASCII using Punycode before prepending the 4-character string "xn--". This 4-character string is called
the ACE prefix, where ACE means ASCII Compatible Encoding, and is used to distinguish Punycode-
encoded labels from ordinary ASCII labels. Note that the ToASCII algorithm can fail in a number of
ways; for example, the final string could exceed the 63-character limit for the DNS. A label on which
ToASCII fails cannot be used in an internationalized domain name.
ToUnicode reverses the action of ToASCII, stripping off the ACE prefix and applying the Punycode
decode algorithm. It does not reverse the Nameprep processing, since that is merely a normalization and
is by nature irreversible. Unlike ToASCII, ToUnicode always succeeds, because it simply returns the
original string if decoding would fail. In particular, this means that ToUnicode has no effect on a string
that does not begin with the ACE prefix.
Example of IDNA encoding

As an example of how IDNA works, suppose the domain to be encoded is Bücher.ch (“Bücher” is
German for “books”, and .ch is the country domain for Switzerland). This has two labels, Bücher and ch.
The second label is pure ASCII, and so is left unchanged. The first label is processed by Nameprep to
give bücher, and then by Punycode to give bcher-kva, and then has xn-- prepended to give xn--bcher-
kva. The final domain suitable for use with the DNS is therefore xn--bcher-kva.ch.
ASCII Spoofing and squatting concerns

Because IDN allows websites to use full Unicode names, it also makes it much easier to create a spoofed
web site that looks exactly like another, including domain name and security certificate, but in fact is
controlled by someone attempting to steal private information. These spoofing attacks potentially open
users up to phishing attacks.
These attacks are not due to technical deficiencies in either the Unicode or IDNA specifications, but due
to the fact that different characters in different languages can look the same, depending on the font used.
For example, Unicode character U+0430, Cyrillic small letter a ("а"), can look identical to Unicode
character U+0061, Latin small letter a, ("a") which is the lowercase "a" used in English. Characters that
look alike in this way may be termed homonyms, homographs, or (less ambiguously) homoglyphs.
Although a computer may display visually identical or very similar glyphs for two different characters,
these differences are still significant to the computer when locating web sites or validating certificates.
The user assumes a one-to-one correspondence between the visual appearance of a name and the named
entity, but when two names appear identical, this correspondence breaks down.
By contrast, with the old set of a to z, 0 to 9, and the hyphen, there is little in the way of homographs. l
and 1 and 0 and o are the closest, and the combination "rn" looks similar to "m" in some fonts; however,
most fonts make a noticeable visible distinction between them. Still, this means even in the worst case a
site like Google would still only need to register 8 names to protect against the homograph attacks.
On December 2001, two Israeli researchers, Evgeniy Gabrilovich and Alex Gontmakher, published a
[1]
paper titled "The Homograph Attack", an attack that used Unicode URLs to spoof a website URL. To
prove the feasibility of this kind of attack, the researchers successfully registered a variant of the domain
name "Microsoft.com" which incorporated Russian language characters.
In general, this kind of attack is known as a homograph spoofing attack. This problem was anticipated
before IDN was introduced, and guidelines were issued to registries to try and avoid or reduce the
problem -- for example, recommending that registries only accept the Latin alphabet and that of their
own country, not all of Unicode. Unfortunately this advice was not followed by those in control of a
number of major TLDs.
On February 7, 2005, Slashdot reported that this exploit was disclosed at the hacker conference
Shmoocon with an example available at http://www.shmoo.com/idn/. On browsers supporting IDNA,
the URL "http://www.pаypal.com/" (where the first a is replaced by a Cyrillic а) appears to lead to
paypal.com but instead lead to a spoofed PayPal web site that said "Meeow."
Internet Explorer 7 imposes restrictions on displaying non-ASCII domain names based on a user-defined
list of allowed languages and provide an anti-phishing filter that checks suspicious Web sites against a
remote database of known phishing sites.
Since Internet Explorer prior to version 7 does not support IDNs, it is not vulnerable to this kind of
attacks. However, older versions of Internet Explorer can be made IDN-compatible by browser plug-ins
some of which are vulnerable to the spoofing attacks. On July 9, 2005, the IDN-enabling plug-in Quero
Toolbar 2.1.0 was released that implemented several anti-spoofing techniques like mixed-script
detection and highlighting of characters belonging to different scripts.
On February 17, 2005, Mozilla developers announced that they would ship their next versions of their
software with IDN support still enabled, but showing the punycode URLs instead, thus thwarting any
attacks exploiting similarities between ASCII and non-ASCII letters (but not necessarily, for example,
between Cyrillic and Greek letters, unless the user knows which Punycode URL corresponds to their
chosen IDN URL) while still allowing people to access websites on an IDN domain. This is a change
from the earlier plans to disable IDN entirely for the time being. [2]
Since then, both Mozilla and Opera have now announced that they will be using per-domain whitelists to
selectively switch on IDN display for domain run by registries which are taking appropriate anti-
spoofing precautions[3]. (See the article on homograph spoofing attacks for more details). As of
September 9, 2005, the most recent version of Mozilla Firefox as well as the most recent Internet
Explorer displays the spoofed Paypal URL as "http://www.xn--pypal-4ve.com/", unsightly but clearly
different from the actual paypal.com.
Safari's approach is to render problematic character sets as punycode. This can be changed by altering
the settings in Safari's system preference files.
History of IDN
● 12/96: Martin Duerst's original Internet Draft proposing UTF5 (the first incarnation of what is
known today as ACE) - UTF-5 was first defined by Martin Duerst at the University of Zürich in
[4][5][6]
● 03/98: Early Research on IDN at National University of Singapore (NUS), Center for Internet
Research (formerly Internet Research and Development Unit - IRDU) led by Prof. Tan Tin Wee
(IDN Project team - Lim Juay Kwang and Leong Kok Yong) and subsequently continued under a
team at Bioinformatrix Pte. Ltd. (BIX Pte. Ltd.) - a NUS spin-off company led by Prof. S.
Subbiah.
● July 98: Geneva INET'98 conference with a BoF discussion on iDNS and APNG General
Meeting and Working Group meeting.
● 07/98: Asia Pacific Networking Group (APNG, now still in existence [7] and distinct from a
gathering known as APSTAR [8]) iDNS Working Group formed. [9]
● 10/98: James Seng was recruited to lead further IDN development at BIX Pte. Ltd. by Prof. S.
Subbiah.
● 02/99: iDNS Testbed launched by BIX Pte. Ltd. under the auspicies of APNG with participation
from CNNIC, JPNIC, KRNIC, TWNIC, THNIC, HKNIC and SGNIC led by James Seng [10]
● 02/99: Presentation of Report on IDN at Joint APNG-APTLD meeting, at APRICOT'99
● 03/99: Endorsement of the IDN Report at APNG General Meeting 1 March 1999.
● 06/99: Grant application by APNG jointly with the Centre for Internet Research (CIR), National
University of Singapore, to the International Development Research Center (IDRC), a Canadian
Government funded international organisation to work on IDN for IPv6. This APNG Project was
funded under the Pan Asia R&D Grant administered on behalf of IDRC by the Canadian
Committee on Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS). Principal Investigator: Tan Tin Wee of
National University of Singapore. [11]
● 07/99 Tout, Walid R. (WALID Inc.) Filed IDNA patent application number US1999000358043
Method and system for internationalizing domain names. Published 2001-01-30 [12]
● 07/99: [13]; Renewed 2000 [14] Internet Draft on UTF5 by James Seng, Martin Duerst and Tan
Tin Wee.
● 08/99: APTLD and APNG forms a working group to look into IDN issues chaired by Kilnam
Chon. [15]
● 10/99: BIX Pte. Ltd. and National University of Singapore together with New York Venture
Capital investors, General Atlantic Partners, spun-off the IDN effort into 2 new Singapore
companies - i-DNS.net International Inc. and i-Email.net Pte. Ltd. that created the first
commercial implementation of an IDN Solution for both domain names and IDN email addresses
respectively.
● 11/99: IETF IDN Birds-of-Feather in Washington was initiated by i-DNS.net at the request of
IETF officials.
● 12/99: i-DNS.net InternationalPte. Ltd. launched the first commercial IDN. It was in Taiwan and
in Chinese characters under the top-level IDN TLD ".gongsi" (meaning loosely ".com") with
endorsement by the Minister of Communications of Taiwan and some major Taiwanese ISPs
with reports of over 200 000 names sold in a week in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia,
China, Australia and USA. Requires use of either plug-in or special DNS hacks.
● Late 1999: Kilnam Chon initiates Task Force on IDNS which led to formation of MINC, the
Multilingual Internet Names Consortium. [16]
● 01/2000: IETF IDN Working Group formed chaired by James Seng and Marc Blanchet
● 01/2000: The second ever commercial IDN launch was IDN TLDs in the Tamil Language,
corresponding to .com, .net, .org, and .edu. These were launched in India with IT Ministry
support by i-DNS.net International. Requires use of either plug-in or special DNS hacks.
● 02/2000: Multilingual Internet Names Consortium(MINC) Proposal BoF at IETF Adelaide. [17]
● 03/2000: APRICOT 2000 Multilingual DNS session [18]
● 04/2000: WALID Inc. (with IDNA patent pending application 6182148) started Registration &
Resolving Multilingual Domain Names.
● 05/2000: Interoperability Testing WG, MINC meeting. San Francisco, chaired by Bill Manning
and Y.Yoneya 12 May 2000. [19]
● 06/2000: Inaugural Launch of the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC) in Seoul [20]
to drive the collaborative roll-out of IDN starting from the Asia Pacific. [21]
● 07/2000: Joint Engineering TaskForce (JET) initiated in Yokohama to study technical issues led
by JPNIC (K.Konishi)
● 07/2000: Official Formation of CDNC Chinese Domain Name Consortium to resolve issues
related to and to deploy Han Character domain names, founded by CNNIC, TWNIC, HKNIC and
MONIC in May 2000. [22] [23]
● 03/01: ICANN Board IDN Working Group formed
● 07/01: Japanese Domain Name Association : JDNA Lauch Ceremony (July 13, 2001) in Tokyo,
Japan.
● 07/01: Urdu Internet Names System (July 28, 2001) in Islamabad, Pakistan, Organised Jointly by
SDNP and MINC. [24]
● 07/01: Presentation on IDN to the Committee Meeting of the Computer Science and
Telecommunications Board, National Academies USA (JULY 11-13, 2001) at University of
California School of Information Management and Systems, Berkeley, CA. [25]
● 08/01: MINC presentation and outreach at the Asia Pacific Advanced Network annual
conference, Penang, Malaysia 20th August 2001
● 10/01: Joint MINC-CDNC Meeting in Beijing 18-20 October 2001
● 11/01: ICANN IDN Committee formed
● 12/01: Joint ITU-WIPO Symposium on Multilingual Domain Names organised in association
with MINC, 6-7 Dec 2001, International Conference Center, Geneva.
● 01/03: Free implementation of StringPrep, Punycode, and IDNA release in GNU Libidn.
● 03/03: Publication of RFC 3454, RFC 3490, RFC 3491 and RFC 3492
● 06/03: Publication of ICANN IDN Guidelines for registries Adopted by .cn, .info, .jp, .org, and .
tw registries.
● 05/04: Publication of RFC 3743, Joint Engineering Team (JET) Guidelines for Internationalized
Domain Names (IDN) Registration and Administration for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean
● 03/05: First Study Group 17 of ITU-T meeting on Internationalized Domain Names [26]
● 05/05: .IN ccTLD (India) creates expert IDN Working Group to create solutions for 22 official
languages
● 04/06: ITU Study Group 17 meeting in Korea gave final approval to the Question on
Internationalized Domain Names [27]
● 06/06: Workshop on IDN at ICANN meeting at Marrakech, Morocco
● 11/06: ICANN GNSO IDN Working Group created to discuss policy implications of IDN TLDs.
Ram Mohan elected Chair of the IDN Working Group.
● 12/06: ICANN meeting at São Paulo discusses status of lab tests of IDNs within the root.
● 01/07: Tamil and Malayalam variant table work completed by India's C-DAC and Afilias
● 03/07: ICANN GNSO IDN Working Group completes work, Ram Mohan presents report at
ICANN Lisboa meeting. [28]
DNS registries known to have adopted IDNA
● .ac: see details
● .ae
● .at: see details
● .biz: NeuLevel/NeuStar supports Chinese, Danish, German, Icelandic, Japanese, Norwegian,
Spanish, Swedish IDN in .biz, see details
● .br: (May 9, 2005) for Portuguese names, see details
● .cat: (February 14, 2006) for Catalan names, see details
● .com: see details
● .ch: (March 1, 2004)
● .cl: (September 21, 2005), see details
● .cn: see CNNIC's web site
● .de: (March 1, 2004), see details
● .dk: (January 1, 2004), (æ, ø, å, ö, ä, ü, & é), see details
● .fi: (September 1, 2005), see details
● .gr: (July 4, 2005) for Greek names, see details
● .hk: (March 8, 2007) for Chinese characters, see details
● .hu
● .info: (March 19, 2004) see details
● .io: see details
● .ir: see more details
● .is: (July 1, 2004) see details
● .jp: (July 2003), for Japanese characters (Kanji, hiragana & katakana)
● .kr: (August 2003), for Korean characters
● .li: (March 1, 2004)
● .lt: (March 30, 2003), (ą, č, ę, ė, į, š, ų, ū, ž), see details
● .lv: (2004), see details
● .museum: (January 20, 2004), see details
● .net: see details
● .no: (February 9, 2004), see details
● .nu: see details
● .org: (January 18, 2005), see details
● .pl: (September 11, 2003), see details
● .pt: (July 1, 2005) for Portuguese characters
● .se: (October 2003), for Swedish characters
● .sh: see details
● .tm: see details
● .tr: (November 14, 2006), see nic.tr website for details
● .tw: Traditional Chinese characters, see TWNIC's site
● .vn: Vietnamese, see character list
Non-IDNA or non-ICANN registries that support non-ASCII domain

names
There are other registries that support non-ASCII domain names; a Singapore company called I-DNS,
also proposes via an own registrar network generic domain name registrations in various languages, but
the country codes at the end of the domain names are also transcripted into the same characters as the
domain names. The company ThaiURL.com in Thailand supports .com registrations via its own
modified DNS, ThaiURL.
Because these companies, and other organizations that offer modified DNS systems, do not subject
themselves to ICANN's control, they must be regarded as alternate DNS roots. Domains registered with
them will therefore not be supported by most Internet Service Providers, and as a result most users will
not be able to look up such domains without manually configuring their computers to use the alternate
DNS.
At ICANN's December meeting at São Paulo, IDNs were discussed in depth. ICANN has continued lab
tests of IDNs within the root to implement the true IDN top level domains (IDN.IDN).
References
1. ^ http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~gabr/papers/homograph_full.pdf
2. GNSO IDN Working Group Outcomes Paper: http://gnso.icann.org/correspondence/gnso-idn-wg-

outcomes-ram.pdf
External links
● RFC 3454 (Stringprep)
● RFC 3490 (IDNA)
● RFC 3491 (Nameprep)
● RFC 3492 (Punycode)
● ICANN Guidelines for the Implementation of Internationalized Domain Names
● IANA Repository of TLD IDN Practices
● Internet Mail Consortium IDNA test tool (includes Perl source code)
● Online Punycode/IDN Decoder/Encoder
● Online StringPrep/Punycode/IDNA encoder/decoder (supports Latin-1, UTF-8, KOI-8, 2022-JP,
etc)
● List of all applications which have implemented IDNA along with a list of open source SDKs
● IANA e-mails explaining the final choice of ACE prefix
● GNU Libidn is an implementation of IDNA
● Unicode Technical Report #36 - Security Considerations for the Implementation of Unicode and
Related Technology
● ICANN Internationalized Domain Names.
● IDN Language Table Registry
● The Homograph Attack, Evgeniy Gabrilovich and Alex Gontmakher, Communications of the
ACM, 45(2):128, February 2002
● MINC - Multilingual Internet Names Consortium - Advocates use of IDN's worldwide.
● ISC IDN-OSS project Open Source EchIDNA plug-in for IE5/6
● IDNSearch.net IDN Example URLs
● IDNcyclopedia IDN News and Resources
● DNlocal News and discussion on all aspects of IDNs
● idnf.ru IDN news, discussions, appraisals and trading in russian
Subdomain
Home | Up
In the Domain Name System (DNS) hierarchy, a subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain.
For example, "example.com" is a subdomain of the "com" top-level domain (TLD) while "www.
example.com" is a service in the domain "example.com". In fact, the "com" TLD is a subdomain of the
root domain, ".". This hierarchical organisation is similar to that in a filesystem; something is a
subdomain if it could be equated to a folder, and a record within that subdomain to a file. Note, though,
that DNS names are written in descending hierarchy right-to-left, where filesystems are written left-to-
right.
Relative to a subdomain, the larger domain that it is a part of is its parent domain, or alternately
superdomain (the former term appears to be preferred by the IETF).
A subdomain is sometimes termed a vanity domain, especially when it is a subdomain of an ISP's own
domain aliased to an individual user account. However, the term "vanity domain" has other usages,
discussed at that article.
Some websites use a different Host name to point to different servers in a clusters. For example, www.
example.com points to Server Cluster 1 or Datacentre 1, and www2.example.com points to Server
Cluster 2 or Datacentre 2, etc.
Subdomains are commonly used by organizations that wish to assign a unique name to a particular
department, function, or service related to the organization. For example, a university might assign "cs"
to the computer science department, such that a number of hosts could be used inside that subdomain,
such as mail.cs.example.edu or www.cs.example.edu.
Depending on application, a record inside a domain, or subdomain might refer to a Host name, or a
service provided by a number of machines in a cluster.
See also
● Domain name
● Host name
● Domain Name System
Domain name registry
Home | Up | Domain name registrar | Domain name drop list | Domain tasting | Reverse domain hijacking
| Domain name warehousing
A domain name registry, also called Network Information Centre (NIC), is part of the Domain Name
System (DNS) of the Internet which converts domain names to IP addresses. It is an organisation that
manages the registration of Domain names within the top-level domains for which it is responsible,
controls the policies of domain name allocation, and technically operates its top-level domain.
Domain names are managed under a hierarchy headed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
(IANA), which manages the top of the DNS tree by administrating the data in the root nameservers.
IANA also operates the .int registry for intergovernmental organisations, the .arpa zone for protocol
administration purposes, and other critical zones such as root-servers.net.
IANA delegates all other domain name authority to other domain name registries such as VeriSign.
Country code top-level domains (ccTLD) are delegated by IANA to national registries such as DENIC
in Germany, or Nominet in the United Kingdom.
Operation
Some name registries are government departments (e.g., the registry for the Vatican www.nic.va ). Some
are co-operatives of internet service providers (such as DENIC) or not-for profit companies (such as
Nominet UK). Others operate as commercial organizations, such as the US registry (www.nic.us).
The allocated and assigned domain names are made available by registries by use of the Whois system
and via their Domain name servers.
Some registries sell the names directly (like SWITCH in Switzerland) and others rely solely on registrars
to sell them.
Policies
Allocation policies
Generally, domain name registries operate a first-come-first-served system of allocation but may reject
the allocation of specific domains on the basis of political, religious, historical, legal or cultural reasons.
For example, in the United States, between 1996 and 1998, InterNIC automatically rejected domain
name applications based on a list of perceived obscenities.
Registries may also control matters of interest to their local communities: for example, the German,
Japanese and Polish registries have introduced internationalized domain names to allow use of local non-
ASCII characters.
Dispute policies
Domains which are registered with ICANN generally have to use the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-
Resolution Policy (UDRP), however, DENIC requires people to use the German civil courts, and
Nominet UK deals with Intellectual Property and other disputes through its own dispute resolution
service.
Cost of registration
The cost of domain registration is set by each individual registry.
Second-level domains
Domain name registries may also impose a system of second-level domains on users. DENIC, the
registry for Germany (.de), does not impose second level domains. AFNIC, the registry for France (.fr),
has some second level domains, but not all registrants have to use them, and Nominet UK, the registry
for the United Kingdom (.uk), requires all names to have a second level domain.
Registrants of second-level domains sometimes act as a registry by offering sub-registrations to their

registration. For example, registrations to .fami.ly are offered by the registrant of fami.ly and not by
GPTC, the registry for Libya (.ly).
See also
● List of Internet top-level domains
External links
● A list of links to domain name registration services around the world
WHOIS
Home | Up
WHOIS is a TCP-based query/response protocol which is widely used for querying a database in order
to determine the owner of a domain name, an IP address, or an autonomous system number on the
Internet. WHOIS lookups were traditionally made using a command line interface, but a number of
simplified web-based tools now exist for looking up domain ownership details from different databases.
Web-based WHOIS clients still rely on the WHOIS protocol to connect to a WHOIS server and do
lookups, and command-line WHOIS clients are still quite widely used by system administrators.
The WHOIS system originated as a method that system administrators could use to look up information
to contact other IP address or domain name administrators (almost like a "white pages"). The use of the
data that is returned from query responses has evolved from those origins into a variety of uses, both
altruistic (such as a Certificate Authority validating the registration for ecommerce https) and nefarious
(such as bulk unsolicited email campaigns).
WHOIS has a sister protocol standard called RWhois.
Thin and thick lookups

There are two ways that WHOIS information may be stored: "thick" or "thin".
● Thick: one WHOIS server stores the WHOIS information from all the registrars for the particular
set of data (so that one WHOIS server can respond with WHOIS information on all .org domains,
for example).
● Thin: one WHOIS server stores the name of the WHOIS server of a registrar that has the full
details on the data being looked up (such as the .com WHOIS servers, which refer the WHOIS
query to the registrar that the domain was registered from). The thick model usually ensures
consistent data and slightly faster lookups (since only one WHOIS server needs to be contacted).
If a WHOIS client does not understand the information being returned, the results of a thin lookup
(which include the WHOIS server of the registrar, and perhaps a few other necessary details) will be
displayed to the end user. If the WHOIS client understood how to deal with this situation, it would
display the full information from the registrar. Unfortunately, there is no standard in the WHOIS
protocol for determining how to distinguish the thin model from the thick model.
Exact implementation of which records are stored varies between domain name registries. Some top-
level domains, including .com and .net, operate a thin WHOIS, allowing the various domain registrars
the ability to maintain their own customers' data. Other registries, including .org, operate a thick model.
Example query
Below is the result of a WHOIS query on wikipedia.org:
Domain ID:D51687756-LROR
Domain Name:WIKIPEDIA.ORG
Created On:13-Jan-2001 00:12:14 UTC
Last Updated On:01-Mar-2006 12:39:33 UTC
Expiration Date:13-Jan-2015 00:12:14 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Go Daddy Software, Inc. (R91-LROR)
Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT RENEW PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:GODA-09495921
Registrant Name:Wikimedia Foundation
Registrant Organization:Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
Registrant Street1:204 37th Ave N, #330
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:St. Petersburg
Registrant State/Province:Florida
Registrant Postal Code:33704
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.7272310101
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:noc@wikimedia.org
Admin ID:GODA-29495921
Admin Name:Jimmy Wales
Admin Organization:Wikimedia Foundation
Admin Street1:204 37th Ave. N. #330
Admin Street2:
Admin Street3:
Admin City:St. Petersburg
Admin State/Province:Florida
Admin Postal Code:33704
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.7276441636
Admin Phone Ext.:
Admin FAX:
Admin FAX Ext.:
Admin Email:jwales@bomis.com
Tech ID:GODA-19495921
Tech Name:Jason Richey
Tech Organization:Wikimedia Foundation
Tech Street1:19589 Oneida Rd.
Tech Street2:
Tech Street3:
Tech City:Apple Valley
Tech State/Province:California
Tech Postal Code:92307
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.7604869194
Tech Phone Ext.:
Tech FAX:
Tech FAX Ext.:
Tech Email:jasonr@bomis.com
Name Server:NS0.WIKIMEDIA.ORG
History
When the Internet was emerging out of the ARPANET entity, there was only one organization that
handled all domain registrations, which was DARPA itself. The process of registration was established
in RFC 920. WHOIS was standardized in the early 1980s to look-up domains, people and other
resources related to domain and number registrations. Because all registration was done by one
organization in that time, one centralized server was used for WHOIS queries. This made looking-up
information very easy.
Early WHOIS servers were highly permissive and would allow wild-card searches. You could do a
WHOIS lookup on a person's last name and get all the individual people who had a registered handle.
You could do a query on a keyword and see all registered domains containing that keyword. You could
even query a given administrative contact and see all domains they were associated with. Due to the
advent of the commercialized Internet, multiple registrars and unethical spammers, such permissive
searching is no longer available.
Initially, while ARPANET faded away in the late 1980s, responsibility of domain registration remained
with DARPA. UUNet began offering domain registration service, however they simply handled the
paperwork for you and still had to deal with DARPA's Network Information Center (NIC). Then the
National Science Foundation directed that management of Internet domain registration would be
handled by commercial, 3rd party entities. InterNIC was formed in 1993 under contract with the NSF,
consisting of Network Solutions, Inc., General Atomics, and AT&T. General Atomics' contract was
cancelled after several years due to performance issues.
On December 1, 1999, management of the top-level domains (TLDs) .com, .net, and .org was turned
over to ICANN. At the time these popular TLDs were switched to a thin WHOIS model. Existing
WHOIS clients stopped working at that time. A month later it had self-detecting CGI support so that the
same program could operate a web-based WHOIS lookup, and an external TLD table to support multiple
whois servers based on the TLD of the request. This eventually became the model of the modern whois
client.
By 2005, there were many more generic top-level domains than there had been in the early 1980s. There
are also many, many more country-code top-level domains. This has led to a complex network of
domain name registrars and registrar associations, especially as the management of Internet
infrastructure has become more internationalized. As such, performing a WHOIS query on a domain
requires knowing the correct, authoritative WHOIS server to use. Tools to do WHOIS proxy searches
have become common. Also, there is a command-line whois client called jwhois which uses a
configuration file to map domain names and network blocks to their appropriate registrars.
In 2004, an IETF committee was formed to standardize a whole new way to look-up information on
domain names and network numbers. The current working name for this proposed new standard is Cross
Registry Information Service Protocol (CRISP).
Querying WHOIS servers
Command-line clients
Originally the only method by which a WHOIS server could be contacted was to use a command line
interface text client. In most cases this was on a Unix or Unix-like platform. The WHOIS client software
was (and still is) distributed as open source. Various commercial Unix implementations may use their
own implementations (for example, Sun Solaris 7 has a WHOIS client authored by Sun).
A WHOIS command line client typically has options to choose which host to connect to for whois
queries, with a default whois server being compiled in. Additional options may allow control of what
port to connect on, displaying additional debugging data, or changing recursion/referral behavior.
Like most TCP/IP client/server applications, a WHOIS client takes the user input and then opens an IP
socket to its destination server. The WHOIS protocol is used to establish a connection on the appropriate
port and send the query. The client waits for a response from the server, which it then either returns to
the end-user or uses to make additional queries. Much more detailed information on the WHOIS
protocol can be found in the RFCs.
Graphical clients
The term "graphical client" may be a bit of a misnomer for a WHOIS client, since all the data to be
derived from a WHOIS server is plain text, and the protocol is a relatively static one. There is not much
interaction to do with a WHOIS server. In this context, the term "graphical client" is taken to mean a
WHOIS client that runs as an application on a GUI OS and uses the OS's standard GUI for user
interaction.
Web-based clients
With the advent of the World Wide Web and especially the loosening up of the Network Solutions
monopoly, looking up WHOIS information via the web has become quite common. Most early web-
based WHOIS clients were merely front-ends to a command-line client, where the resulting output just
got displayed on a webpage with little, if any, clean-up or formatting.
Nowadays, web based WHOIS clients usually perform the WHOIS queries directly and then format the
results for display. Many such clients are proprietary, authored by domain name registrars such as Go
Daddy or Network Solutions.
The need for web-based clients came from the fact that command-line WHOIS clients largely existed
only in the Unix and large computing worlds. Microsoft Windows and Macintosh computers had no
WHOIS clients, so registrars had to find a way to provide access to WHOIS data for potential customers.
Many end-users still rely on such clients, even though command line and graphical clients exist now for
most home PC platforms.
Perl modules
CPAN has several Perl modules available that work with WHOIS servers. Many of them are not current
and do not fully function with the current (2005) WHOIS server infrastructure. However, there is still
much useful functionality to derive including looking up AS numbers and registrant contacts.
Problems
● Privacy: Registrant's contact details, such as address and telephone number, are made easily
accessible to anyone over the internet for most top-level domains. Although some registrars offer
private registrations (where the contact information of the registrar is shown), under ICANN
rules the registrar or "private registration" company is then legal owner (lessor) of the domain.
● False registrations: The privacy services mentioned above are often abused by people involved in
illegal activity, who use them in the knowledge that it makes it extremely difficult for entities
(even law-enforcement officers) outside of their registrar's legal jurisdiction to obtain their
contact details. The fact that some registrars are uncooperative when notified of illegal activity
makes this situation somewhat worse.
● Inaccuracy of information: Some registrars are not sufficiently careful to ensure the accuracy of
contact details listed in the WHOIS.
● Obsolescence: most of the information stored in a WHOIS server, is subject to change later in
time. For instance, the owner may change his (geographical) address. Since the email address
used to administrate the domain often remains valid, the owner may not bother to update his
address with the registar.
● History: when a domain record is updated (moved, sold), the previous information is not archived
but overridden. A few WHOIS web servers, however, do automatically monitor and cache the
records for domains which were queried through their interface, making the WHOIS history
partially available.
● Spam: Spammers often harvest plain-text email addresses from WHOIS requests. This means
that both WHOIS servers and websites offering WHOIS lookups have resorted to special systems
(such as Captcha, where users have to type in letters or numbers from a picture) and rate-limiting
systems.
● Internationalization: The WHOIS protocol was not written with an international audience in
mind. A WHOIS server cannot tell which text encoding it is using for either the requests or
replies, and the servers were originally all simply using US-ASCII, although this cannot be
assumed anymore with international servers. This obviously will impact the usability of the
WHOIS protocol in countries outside the USA, especially as internationalized domain names are
falling into wider use. A user can (and possibly will have to due to this limitation) use punycode,
but this leads to conversion problems as the punycode system is not easy for a regular user to
grasp.
● Lack of WHOIS server lists: There is no central list of WHOIS servers. Therefore, people writing
WHOIS tools need to find their own list of WHOIS servers, and different WHOIS tools may
contact different WHOIS servers.
● Different registrars' WHOIS servers return results in different formats, making automation of
parsing WHOIS data difficult. While such automation has many legitimate uses (primarily for
ISPs), it also lends itself to use by spammers and other people acting unethically.
Law and policy

WHOIS has generated policy issues in the United States federal government. As noted above, WHOIS
creates a privacy issue which is also tied to free speech and anonymous speech. However, WHOIS is an
important tool for law enforcement officers investigating violations like spam and phishing to track
down the owners of domain names. Law enforcement officers become frustrated when WHOIS records
are filled with rubbish. As a result, law enforcement agencies have sought to make WHOIS records both
open and verified.[1] The Federal Trade Commission has testified about how inaccurate WHOIS records
thwart their investigations.[2] There have been congressional hearings that have touched on the
importance of WHOIS in 2006, 2002, and 2001.[3] The Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act "make
it a violation of trademark and copyright law if a person knowingly provided, or caused to be provided,
materially false contact information in making, maintaining, or renewing the registration of a domain
[4]
name used in connection with the violation."
See also
● Domain name registry
Request for Comments
● RFC 812 - NICNAME/WHOIS (1982, obsolete)

● RFC 954 - NICNAME/WHOIS (1985, obsolete)
● RFC 3912 - WHOIS protocol specification (2004, current)
● Complete list of RFCs about whois
Reference
1. ^ FTC Calls for Openness, Accessibility in Whois Database System, FTC 7/18/2006
2. ^ FTC Testimony on WHOIS, FTC 5/22/02
3. ^ Whois at heart of congressional hearings, CNET 7/11/01
4. ^ Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act
External links
● The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
● The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
● WHOIS php script
● WHOIS web clients at the Open Directory Project
Uniform Resource Locator
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Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a technical, Web-related term used in two distinct meanings:
● In popular usage, it is a widespread synonym for Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) — many
popular and technical texts will use the term "URL" when referring to URI;
● Strictly, the idea of a uniform syntax for global identifiers of network-retrievable documents was
the core idea of the World Wide Web. In the early times, these identifiers were variously called
"document names", "Web addresses" and "Uniform Resource Locators". These names were
misleading, however, because not all identifiers were locators, and even for those that were, this
was not their defining characteristic. Nevertheless, by the time the RFC 1630 formally defined
the term "URI" as a generic term best suited to the concept, the term "URL" had gained
widespread popularity, which has continued to this day.
URI/URL syntax in brief

Every URI (and therefore every URL) begins with the scheme name that defines its namespace, purpose,
and the syntax of the remaining part of the URI. Most Web-enabled programs will try to dereference a
URI according to the semantics of its scheme and a context-vbn For example, a Web browser will
usually dereference a http://example.org/ by performing an HTTP request to the host example.org, at the
default HTTP port (see Port 80). Dereferencing URI mailto:bob@example.com will usually open a
"Compose e-mail" window with the address bob@example.com in the "To" field.
"example.com" is a domain name; an IP address or other network address might be used instead.
URLs as locators
In its current strict technical meaning, a URL is a URI that, “in addition to identifying a resource,
[provides] a means of locating the resource by describing its primary access mechanism (e.g., its
[1]
network ‘location’).”
Clean URLs
"Clean" and "cruft-free" describe URLs which are:
● Not tied to technical details, such as the software used or whether the resource comes from a file
or a database - so that a change in the technology will not break existing links to the resource. e.
g. /cars/audi/ is preferable to /cars/audi/index.php or /myprog.jsp?
page=cars/audi/.
● Not tied to internal organisational structure, such as the current editor or department that created
the document - so an internal reorganisation will not cause existing links to the document to
break. e.g. /recommendations/2007/xyz/ is better than /~users/jane/current-
work/xyz/ or /xyz-team/recommendations/.
● Consistent with other URLs in the same site in terms of hierarchy. This is desirable so a user can
see where they are in the structure of the site, and can predict where to find what they are looking
for. e.g. /cars/audi/ and /cars/ford/, instead of /cars/audi/ but /ford-cars/.
● Consistent with other URLs in the same site in terms of action. This is desirable so a user can
predict other, similar URLs on that site, e.g. if /blogs/andrea/feed/ shows a feed of
Andrea's blog, then appending /feed/ to any another blog on the same site should show a feed
for that blog.
● A single location for a single resource. The same resource should not be available from multiple
URLs, as this results in both confusion (Are they the same resource, or is one a copy of the other?
Which is the 'right' one? Is one new and the other due to be removed?) and technical difficulties,
e.g. counting links to a particular resource, or caching content to speed up access but not being
able to show the cached content when the resource is accessed using a different URL.
An example of the difference between "clean" and "standard" URLs could be seen as:
Standard:
http://example.com/index.php?section=articles&subsection=recent
Clean:
http://example.com/articles/recent/
or
http://example.com/articles/2007/
Clean URLs with web services
Web services have been created that allow users to create short URLs which are easier to write down,
remember or pass around. They are also more suitable for use where space is limited, for example in an
IRC conversation, email signature, online forum or fixed width document (eg. email). A sample of
current web services are provided below:
● TinyURL.com - probably the most widely used due to its memorable name. Example: http://
www.tinyurl.com/qvqqo
● doiop.com - one of the early services which offers keywords as opposed to random URLs.
Example: http://doiop.com/keyword
● dtmurl.com
● gu.ma
● notlong.com - lets you choose your own sub-domain. Example: http://your-choice.notlong.com/
● SnipURL.com (synonyms: snurl.com, snipr.com)
● shorl.com
● URLStrip.com
of third-party clean URLs
Ultimately these services hide the final destination from a web user. This can be used to unwittingly
send people to sites that offend their sensibilities, or crash or compromise their computer using browser
vulnerabilities. To help combat such abuse, TinyURL allows a user to set a cookie-based preference
such that TinyURL stops at the TinyURL website, giving a preview of the final link, when that user
clicks TinyURLs. Substituting http://preview.tinyurl.com for http://tinyurl.com in the URL is another
way of stopping at a preview of the final link before clicking through to it. Opaqueness is also leveraged
by spammers[2], who can use such links in spam (mostly blog spam), bypassing URL blacklists.
Furthermore, this approach creates dependency on a third-party service that may change, go away, or
maintain privacy-compromising logs of user activity indefinitely.
Address bar
Address Bar in Microsoft Internet Explorer.
URLs are typically entered into the address or location bar of a web browser. To the right is a standard
Microsoft Internet Explorer address bar. Address bars may of course vary in appearance depending on
which web browser it is displayed in, and which skin is in use.
External links
● Cool URIs don't change
● Why you should be using disambiguated URLs
● RFC-3986 Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax
● RFC-3986 (html)
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Top-level domain
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A top-level domain (TLD) is the last part of an Internet domain name; that is, the letters which follow
the final dot of any domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level
domain is com (or COM, as domain names are not case-sensitive).
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) currently classifies top-level domains into three types:
● country code top-level domains (ccTLD): Used by a country or a dependent territory. It is two
letters long, for example .us for the United States.
● generic top-level domains (gTLD): Used (at least in theory) by a particular class of
organizations (for example, .com for commercial organizations). It is three or more letters long.
Most gTLDs are available for use worldwide, but for historical reasons .mil (military) and .gov
(governmental) are restricted to use by the respective U.S. authorities. gTLDs are subclassified
into sponsored top-level domains (sTLD), e.g. .aero, .coop and .museum, and unsponsored top-
level domains (uTLD), e.g. .biz, .info, .name and .pro.
● infrastructure top-level domains (iTLD): The top-level domain .arpa is the only confirmed
one. .root has been known to exist without reason.
A full list of currently existing TLDs can be found at the list of Internet top-level domains.
Historical TLDs
A .nato was added in the late 1980s by the NIC for the use of NATO, who felt that none of the then
existing TLDs adequately reflected their status as an international organization. Soon after this addition,
however, the NIC created the .int TLD for the use of international organizations, and convinced
NATO to use nato.int instead. However, the nato TLD, although no longer used, was not deleted
until July 1996.
Other historical TLDs are .cs for Czechoslovakia, .zr for Zaire and .dd for East Germany. In contrast to
these, the TLD .su has remained in active use despite the demise of the Soviet Union that it represents.
Pseudo-domains
In the past the Internet was just one of many wide-area computer networks. Computers not connected to
the Internet, but connected to another network such as BITNET, CSNET or UUCP, could generally
exchange e-mail with the Internet via e-mail gateways. When used on the Internet, addresses on these
networks were often placed under pseudo-domains such as bitnet, csnet and uucp; however these pseudo-
domains implemented in mail server configurations such as sendmail.cf and were not real top-level
domains and did not exist in DNS.
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, so pseudo-domains now largely survive as historical relics.
The anonymity network Tor has a pseudo-domain onion, which can only be reached with a Tor client
because it uses the Tor-protocol (onion routing) to reach the hidden service in order to protect the
anonymity of the domain.
.local deserves special mention as it is required by the Zeroconf protocol. It is also used by many
organizations internally, which will become a problem for those users as Zeroconf becomes more
popular. Both .site and .internal have been suggested for private usage, but no consensus has yet
emerged.
Reserved TLDs
RFC 2606 reserves the following four top-level domain names for various purposes, with the intention
that these should never become actual TLDs in the global DNS:
● example — reserved for use in examples

● invalid — reserved for use in obviously invalid domain names
● localhost — reserved to avoid conflict with the traditional use of localhost
● test — reserved for use in tests
TLDs in alternative roots

Alternative DNS roots have their own sets of TLDs. See that article for details. At times, browser
plugins have been developed to allow access to some set of "alternative" domain names even when the
normal DNS roots are otherwise used.
See also
● List of Internet top-level domains
References
● Addressing the World: National Identity and Internet Country Code Domains, edited by Erica
Schlesinger Wass (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, ISBN 0-7425-2810-3) [1], examines connections
between cultures and their ccTLDs.
● Ruling the Root by Milton Mueller (MIT Press, 2001, ISBN 0-262-13412-8) [2], discusses TLDs
and domain name policy more generally.
External links
● Articles on CircleID about Top-Level Domains
● The ICANNwiki focuses on domain name allocation.
● TLD Statistics
● IANA TLD List
● Southern Hemisphere TLDs
Country code top-level domain
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A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved
for a country or a dependent territory.
ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs. Creation and
delegation of ccTLDs is performed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and with
certain exceptions noted below corresponds to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes maintained by the
United Nations.
Delegation and management

The IANA (currently contracted to ICANN) is responsible for determining an appropriate trustee for
each ccTLD. Administration and control is then delegated to that entity, which is responsible for the
policies and operation of the domain; the current delegation can be determined from IANA's list of
ccTLDs. Individual ccTLDs may thus have varying requirements and fees for registering subdomains.
There may be a local presence requirement (for instance, citizenship or other connection to the ccTLD),
as for example the Canadian (ca) and German (de) domains, or registration may be open.
ISO 3166-1 and ccTLDs
ISO 3166-1 codes not used as ccTLDs
The codes EH and KP, although theoretically available as ccTLDs for Western Sahara and North Korea,
have never been assigned and do not exist in DNS. Similarly, the code CS (Serbia and Montenegro) is
not assigned an operator (cs was previously assigned to Czechoslovakia). TL (post-independence East
Timor), is now being introduced to replace TP.
All other current ISO 3166-1 codes have been assigned and do exist in DNS. However, some of these
are effectively unused. In particular, the ccTLDs for the Norwegian dependency Bouvet Island (bv) and
the designation Svalbard and Jan Mayen (sj) do exist in DNS, but no subdomains have been assigned,
and it is Norid policy not to assign any at present. Only one subdomain is still registered in gb (ISO
3166-1 for United Kingdom) and no new registrations are being accepted for it. Sites in the UK
generally use uk (see below).
ccTLDs not in ISO 3166-1
Six ccTLDs are currently in use despite not being ISO 3166-1 two-letter codes. Some of these codes
were in older ISO 3166-1 two-letter codes (now listed in ISO 3166-3).
● uk (United Kingdom): The ISO 3166-1 code for the United Kingdom is GB, however the JANET
network had already selected uk as a top-level identifier for its pre-existing Name Registration
Scheme, and this was incorporated into the top-level domains. gb was assigned with the intention
of a transition, but this never occurred and the use of uk is now entrenched.
● su (the obsolete ISO 3166-1 code for Soviet Union): The su managers stated in 2001 they will
commence accepting new su registrations, but it is unclear whether this action is compatible with
ICANN policy.
● ac (Ascension Island): This code is a vestige of IANA's decision in 1996 to allow the use of
codes reserved in the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 reserve list for use by the Universal Postal Union. The
decision was later reversed, with Ascension Island now the sole outlier. (Three other ccTLDs, gg
(Guernsey), im (Isle of Man) and je (Jersey) also fell under this category from 1996 until they
received corresponding ISO 3166 codes in March 2006.)
● eu (European Union): On September 25, 2000, ICANN decided to allow the use of any two-letter
code in the ISO 3166-1 reserve list that is reserved for all purposes. Only EU currently meets this
criterion. Following a decision by the EU's Council of Telecommunications Ministers in March
2002, progress was slow, but a registry (named EURid) was chosen by the European
Commission, and criteria for allocation set: ICANN approved eu as a ccTLD, and it opened for
registration on 7 December 2005 for the holders of prior rights. Since 7 April 2006, registration is
open to all.
● tp (the previous ISO 3166-1 code for East Timor): To be phased out in favour of tl during 2005.
● yu (the previous ISO 3166-1 code for Serbia and Montenegro, when it was still known as
Yugoslavia)
Historical ccTLDs
There are two ccTLDs which have been deleted after the corresponding 2-letter code was withdrawn
from ISO 3166-1, namely cs (for Czechoslovakia) and zr (for Zaire). There had also been a ccTLD for
the GDR, dd, which was never used at all. There may be a significant delay between withdrawal from
ISO 3166-1 and deletion from the DNS; for example, ZR ceased to be an ISO 3166-1 code in 1997, but
the zr ccTLD was not deleted until 2001. Other ccTLDs corresponding to obsolete ISO 3166-1 have not
yet been deleted; in some cases they may never be deleted due to the amount of disruption this would
cause for a heavily used ccTLD. In particular, the Soviet Union's ccTLD su remains in use more than a
decade after SU was removed from ISO 3166-1.
Unconventional ccTLD usage

Lenient registration restrictions on certain ccTLDs have resulted in domain names like I.am, tip.it,
start.at and go.to. Other variations of ccTLD usage have been called domain hacks, where the
Second-level domain and ccTLD are used together to form one word or one title. This has resulted in
domains like blo.gs of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (gs), del.icio.us of United
States of America (us), and cr.yp.to of Tonga (to). (Non country code TLDs have also been used, like
inter.net which uses the .net gTLD, probably the first domain hack ever.)
Vanity ccTLDs
Vanity ccTLDs are TLDs which are used largely for business purposes, usually outside their home
countries, because of their name. For example,
● ad is a ccTLD for Andorra, but has recently been increasingly used by advertising agencies.
● ag is a ccTLD for Antigua and Barbuda and is sometimes used for agricultural sites.
● am is a ccTLD for Armenia, but is often used for AM radio stations.
● cc is a ccTLD for Cocos (Keeling) Islands but is used for a wide variety of sites.
● cd is a ccTLD for Democratic Republic of Congo but is used for CD merchants and file sharing
sites.
● fm is a ccTLD for the Federated States of Micronesia but it is often used for FM radio stations.
● gg is a ccTLD for Guernsey but it is often used by the gaming and gambling industry, particularly
in relation to horse racing gee-gee.
● in is a ccTLD for India but is widely used in the internet industry.
● je is a ccTLD for Jersey but is often used as a diminutive in Dutch (e.g. "huis.je"), as
"you" ("zoek.je" = "search ye!"), or as "I" in French (e.g. "moi.je")
● la is a ccTLD for Laos but is marketed as the TLD for Los Angeles.
● nu is a ccTLD for Niue but marketed as resembling "new" in English and "now" in Nordic/
Dutch. Also meaning "nude" in French.
● sc is a ccTLD for Seychelles but is often used as .Source
● tv is a ccTLD for Tuvalu but it is used for the tv/entertainment industry purposes.
● ws is a ccTLD for Samoa (earlier Western Samoa) is marketed as .Website
● vu is a ccTLD for Vanuatu but means "seen" in French.
List of ccTLDs
*=Foreign registration permitted
● .ac – Ascension Island *

.ad – Andorra
.ae – United Arab Emirates
.af – Afghanistan
.ag – Antigua and Barbuda *
.ai – Anguilla
.al – Albania
.am – Armenia *
.an – Netherlands Antilles
.ao – Angola
.aq – Antarctica
.ar – Argentina
.as – American Samoa *
.at – Austria *
.au – Australia
.aw – Aruba
.ax – Aland Islands
.az – Azerbaijan
● .ba – Bosnia and Herzegovina

.bb – Barbados
.bd – Bangladesh
.be – Belgium *
.bf – Burkina Faso
.bg – Bulgaria
.bh – Bahrain
.bi – Burundi *
.bj – Benin
.bm – Bermuda
.bn – Brunei
.bo – Bolivia *
.br – Brazil *
.bs – Bahamas *
.bt – Bhutan
.bv – Bouvet Island (not in use; no registrations)
.bw – Botswana
.by – Belarus
.bz – Belize *
● .ca – Canada
.cc – Cocos (Keeling) Islands *
.cd – Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly .zr – Zaire) *
.cf – Central African Republic
.cg – Republic of the Congo *
.ch – Switzerland *
.ci – Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
.ck – Cook Islands *
.cl – Chile
.cm – Cameroon
.cn – People's Republic of China *
.co – Colombia
.cr – Costa Rica
.cs – Serbia and Montenegro (formerly .yu – Yugoslavia; Note: on June 3, 2006, Montenegro
declared independence, thus dissolving the state union) (.cs code not assigned; no DNS) (.cs code
previously used for Czechoslovakia)
.cu – Cuba
.cv – Cape Verde
.cx – Christmas Island *
.cy – Cyprus
.cz – Czech Republic
● .de – Germany
.dj – Djibouti *
.dk – Denmark *
.dm – Dominica
.do – Dominican Republic
.dz – Algeria
● .ec – Ecuador
.ee – Estonia
.eg – Egypt
.eh – Western Sahara (not assigned; no DNS)
.er – Eritrea
.es – Spain *
.et – Ethiopia
.eu – European Union (code "exceptionally reserved" by ISO 3166-1)
F
● .fi – Finland
.fj – Fiji *
.fk – Falkland Islands
.fm – Federated States of Micronesia *
.fo – Faroe Islands
.fr – France
● .ga – Gabon
.gb – United Kingdom (Reserved domain by IANA; deprecated – see .uk)
.gd – Grenada
.ge – Georgia
.gf – French Guiana
.gg – Guernsey
.gh – Ghana
.gi – Gibraltar
.gl – Greenland *
.gm – Gambia
.gn – Guinea
.gp – Guadeloupe
.gq – Equatorial Guinea
.gr – Greece *
.gs – South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands *
.gt – Guatemala
.gu – Guam
.gw – Guinea-Bissau
.gy – Guyana
● .hk – Hong Kong *

.hm – Heard Island and McDonald Islands *
.hn – Honduras *
.hr – Croatia
.ht – Haiti
.hu – Hungary *
● .id – Indonesia
.ie – Ireland
.il – Israel *
.im – Isle of Man *
.in – India *
.io – British Indian Ocean Territory *
.iq – Iraq
.ir – Iran *
.is – Iceland
.it – Italy
● .je – Jersey
.jm – Jamaica
.jo – Jordan
.jp – Japan
● .ke – Kenya
.kg – Kyrgyzstan
.kh – Cambodia
.ki – Kiribati
.km – Comoros
.kn – Saint Kitts and Nevis
.kp – North Korea (not assigned; no DNS)
.kr – South Korea
.kw – Kuwait
.ky – Cayman Islands
.kz – Kazakhstan *
● .la – Laos *
.lb – Lebanon
.lc – Saint Lucia
.li – Liechtenstein *
.lk – Sri Lanka
.lr – Liberia
.ls – Lesotho
.lt – Lithuania
.lu – Luxembourg
.lv – Latvia *
.ly – Libya *
● .ma – Morocco
.mc – Monaco
.md – Moldova *
.me – Montenegro
.mg – Madagascar
.mh – Marshall Islands
.mk – Republic of Macedonia
.ml – Mali
.mm – Myanmar
.mn – Mongolia *
.mo – Macau
.mp – Northern Mariana Islands *
.mq – Martinique
.mr – Mauritania
.ms – Montserrat *
.mt – Malta
.mu – Mauritius *
.mv – Maldives
.mw – Malawi *
.mx – Mexico *
.my – Malaysia
.mz – Mozambique
● .na – Namibia *
.nc – New Caledonia
.ne – Niger
.nf – Norfolk Island *
.ng – Nigeria
.ni – Nicaragua
.nl – Netherlands * (first ccTLD registered)
.no – Norway
.np – Nepal
.nr – Nauru *
.nu – Niue *
.nz – New Zealand *
O
● .om – Oman
● .pa – Panama
.pe – Peru
.pf – French Polynesia
.pg – Papua New Guinea
.ph – Philippines *
.pk – Pakistan *
.pl – Poland *
.pm – Saint Pierre and Miquelon
.pn – Pitcairn Islands *
.pr – Puerto Rico *
.ps – Palestine *
.pt – Portugal *
.pw – Palau
.py – Paraguay
● .qa – Qatar
● .re – Réunion
.ro – Romania *
.rs – Serbia
.ru – Russia *
.rw – Rwanda
● .sa – Saudi Arabia

.sb – Solomon Islands *
.sc – Seychelles *
.sd – Sudan
.se – Sweden *
.sg – Singapore
.sh – Saint Helena *
.si – Slovenia
.sj – Svalbard and Jan Mayen islands (not in use; no registrations)
.sk – Slovakia
.sl – Sierra Leone
.sm – San Marino *
.sn – Senegal
.so – Somalia * (down, still is delegated to Monolith [ml.org] Philadelphia, an entity defunct
since end-1998)
.sr – Suriname *
.st – São Tomé and Príncipe *
.su – Soviet Union (deprecated; being phased out; code "transitionally reserved" by ISO 3166-1)
.sv – El Salvador
.sy – Syria *
.sz – Swaziland *
● .tc – Turks and Caicos Islands

.td – Chad
.tf – French Southern Territories
.tg – Togo *
.th – Thailand
.tj – Tajikistan *
.tk – Tokelau *
.tl – East Timor (formerly .tp) *
.tm – Turkmenistan *
.tn – Tunisia
.to – Tonga *
.tp – East Timor (deprecated – use .tl; code "transitionally reserved" by ISO 3166-1)
.tr – Turkey
.tt – Trinidad and Tobago *
.tv – Tuvalu *
.tw – Republic of China (Taiwan) *
.tz – Tanzania
● .ua – Ukraine
.ug – Uganda *
.uk – United Kingdom (code "exceptionally reserved" by ISO 3166-1) (see also .gb)
.us – United States *
.uy – Uruguay
.uz – Uzbekistan
● .va – Vatican City

.vc – Saint Vincent and the Grenadines *
.ve – Venezuela
.vg – British Virgin Islands *
.vi – United States Virgin Islands
.vn – Vietnam
.vu – Vanuatu *
● .wf – Wallis and Futuna

.ws – Samoa (formerly Western Samoa) *
● .ye – Yemen
.yt – Mayotte
.yu – Yugoslavia (subsequently renamed Serbia and Montenegro)
(code officially replaced by .cs (see above) but still used; code "transitionally reserved" by ISO
3166-1)
● .za – South Africa *

.zm – Zambia
.zw – Zimbabwe
External links
● IANA's list of ccTLDs – official site
● World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Domain name dispute resolution
● World-Wide Alliance of Top Level Domain-names
● Norid: Domain name registries around the world
● ccTLD study 2005
Domain name speculation
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Domain name speculation refers to buying domains with the intent of selling them later for a higher
price. The speculative element can be linked to news and current events, though the period during which
such domains can be sold or flipped is limited. The main target of domain name speculation is generic
words which can be valuable for type-in traffic and for the dominant position they would have in any
field due to their descriptive nature. Hence generic words such as poker, insurance, travel, creditcards,
sex and others are highly valuable targets of domain speculation in any Top Level Domain.
Sometimes, domain name speculation involves finding domain names early in a market (typically when
a new domain is launched), registering them and waiting until the market grows to sell them. Domains
such as business.com have sold for millions of US dollars.
The .com Top-Level Domain is the focus of most domain speculation activity as it is the largest TLD.
There is domain speculation in other TLDs such as .net and to a lesser extent in .org. The gTLDs have
also been the subject of much domain speculation and .info is perhaps the most active in this respect due
to the low registration fees.
Domain name speculation also occurs in the ccTLDs such as .uk, .de and .us. The German .de has over
10 Million domains registered. The UK's .uk has over 5 Million domains registered, mainly in its
commercial sub-domain .co.uk. The .de and .uk ccTLDs are mature markets where good domain names
can command high prices. The .eu ccTLD is a good example of what happens when speculative activity
overtakes ordinary domain registrations. A combination of an inept registry (Eurid) and excessive
speculation by businesses exploiting a poorly structured regulatory framework meant that, according to
EURid's own statistics, over 50% of the registrations could be considered to be at best speculative and at
worst Domain name warehousing.
Specialist and repurposed ccTLDs have also seen elements of domain name speculation. One of the best
examples is that of the .tv ccTLD which has found the fact that TV is an abbreviation for the word
television to be rather lucrative. The .mobi TLD is a good example of a specialist TLD in that it is
specifically targeted at mobile phones and similar mobile technology. The operators of .mobi, mTLD,
have reserved some of the premium generic words which will be auctioned off. The intent is to create a
more level playing field for those interesting in developing websites. The .mobi premium generic words
and phrases list is a good example of the domain names that are at the heart of most early-market
domain name speculation.
Domain name speculators also register domain names based on seemingly generic phrases such as
propertyforsale in the hope that these domain names could be sold later to businesses. Typically, domain
name speculators will try to stay away from domain names containing trademarks as this could be
considered cybersquatting.
Primary market speculation

The primary market for domain name speculation covers newly registered domain names that have not
been registered before. Such domain names are often linked to news and current events and have not
been registered before. They are in reality new domain names. These would be domain name
registrations in new TLDs.
Secondary market speculation

The secondary market for domain names covers previously registered domain names that have not been
renewed by their registrants. Sometimes these dropped domain names can be more valuable due to their
having had high-profile websites associated with them. Others can be valuable because of the generic
nature of the domain name or the length of the domain name with two character and three character
domain names being the most sought after.
The business of registering the domain names as they are deleted by the registries is known as drop
catching. It is a highly competitive business. The main operators in this business typically set up a
number of front companies as registrars. This ensures that when a domain name is deleted by the
registry, the chances of reregistering it are multiplied. The newly reregistered domains are then, more
often than not, auctioned off to the highest bidder by these drop catcher companies.
External links
A 242 page PDF list of the premium generic words and phrases reserved by the .mobi TM registry,
mTLD during the Sunrise phase of the launch of .mobi TLD
Home | Up | Domain name speculation | Name generator | Domain parking | Domain hack
| Typosquatting | Domain sniping | Domain hijacking | Cybersquatting
Name generator
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A name generator is a program that uses language rules or word combining techniques to generate a list
of names. Name generators are sometimes created with specific uses in mind ranging from marketing
professionals who may use the generated names to brainstorm brandable product name ideas; through to
people seeking an unusual baby or pet name.
Domain name generator

Registering a meaningful domain name has become problematic as most of the dictionary words are
already registered by organizations or individuals. Unique meaningful word combinations not already
registered are becoming more difficult to choose. The introduction of alternative Generic top-level
domains solved the problem partially; however, most of the businesses still prefer the ".com" extension.
The are several different strategies for selecting a good domain name: incorporating company's name or
its abbreviation into the domain name, use some industry-specific word or a phrase, or use a short and
easy to memorize name. These strategies are usually employed by domain name generators that combine
a key word provided by the user with a database of prefixes and suffixes. A domain name generator
creates a list of names and simultaneously queries the Whois database to see whether the resulting
names still have unregistered domains. Such tools are also used by domainers hoping to find domains
that can later be traded in the domain name aftermarket.
Fictional name generators

Another type of name generator is that which creates names for people and characters as used by
authors, role players and wargaming scenarios. This type of name generator may create a name of
specific nationality by combining typical given name and family names together. More sophisticated
rules may create the female form of family name as used in countries such as Russian and Greece. Other
generators may create totally fictional names based on syllabals arranged by formula in such a way that
they create the right sound for a genre: elf names, troll names, Dickensian names etc.
Baby name generators

Parents choosing a name for their offspring or someone choosing a name for a pet might consider family
tradition or consult lists of popular given names. Others will get inspiration from name generators that
either randomly suggest given names or create names based on combinations of syllables.
Domain parking
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Domain parking is an advertising practice used primarily by domain name registrars and internet
advertising publishers to monetize type-in traffic visiting an under-developed domain name. The domain
name will usually resolve to a page containing relevant advertising listings and links. These links will be
targeted to the predicted interests of the visitor and may change dynamically based on the results that
visitors click on. Usually the domain owner is paid based on how many links have been visited (e.g. pay
per click) and on how beneficial those visits have been. The keywords for any given domain name
provide clues as to the intent of the visitor before arriving.
Another use of domain parking is to be a placeholder of an existing web site. A company might choose
to use this method to redirect its website traffic to another web site it owns.
Expired domains that were formerly websites are also sought after for domain parking. A domain that
was used as a website and is allowed to expire will still maintain most of its prior inbound links. These
types of domains usually start off with their largest amount of visitor traffic initially after being claimed
from the domain drop lists. As website operators and search engines begin to remove the former inbound
links, the traffic to the parked domain will begin to decline.
On domains with a 'one-click' implementation, a click on a keyword is not necessary to generate ads.
The ads are targeted based on the domain name.
Domains with 'two-click' implementations require a click on a keyword or a keyword search to generate
ads.
Domain parking can be classified as monetized and non-monetized. In the former, ads are shown to
visitors and the domain is 'monetized'. In the latter, an "Under Construction" or a "Coming Soon"
message is put up on the domain. This a single page web site that people see when they type the domain
name in a web browser. This is one quick way for getting an Internet presence. Domain names can be
parked before a web site is ready for launching.
There are several companies that actively cater to domain name owners and act as middlemen to serve
advertisements on parking pages. The parking pages are propagated automatically on a domain owner's
web property when they either change the name servers or forward the URL.
External links
● The Death of Domain Parking?, from Slashdot.org
Domain hack
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A domain hack is an unconventional domain name that combines domain labels, especially the top-
level domain (TLD), to spell out the full "name" or title of the domain, making a kind of pun.
For example the second-level domain (SLD) blo.gs makes use of the TLD .gs (South Georgia and the
South Sandwich Islands) to spell "blogs". The third-level domains del.icio.us and cr.yp.to make use of
the SLDs icio.us and yp.to from the TLDs .us (United States) and .to (Tonga) to spell "delicious" and
"crypto" respectively.
In this context, the "hack" represents a clever trick (as in programming), not an exploit or break-in (as in
security).
Shorter domain names

Domain hacks offer the ability to produce extremely short domain names. A popular real world example
is blo.gs with five letters total, versus the comparable blogs.com with eight letters or the often
preferred www.blogs.com with eleven letters. Domain hacks default to the omission of the www. prefix,
with the side effect of shortening the domain name, as every letter is taken into account as the site's title.
History
On Monday, November 23, 1992, inter.net was registered [1]. On Friday, May 3, 2002, icio.us was
registered to create del.icio.us, the most visited domain hack, with the prepending of the "del" third-level
domain.
Yahoo! acquired blo.gs[2] on June 14, 2005, and del.icio.us[3] on December 9, 2005.
Who.is is a whois server, indicating the registered ownership information of a domain. It was established
June 12, 2002 and registered to an address in Reykjavík as the .is extension is nominally Iceland.
Whocalled.us, a consumer-complaint site listing telephone numbers of known telemarketers, was first
registered in 2005.
Other languages
Domain hacks are by no means restricted to the English language.
Some years ago, a passing fad amongst French-speakers was to register their names in the Niue TLD .
nu, which led to so-and-so.NU, which in French and Portuguese means "nude" or "naked"; however, as
of 2007, Niue authorities have revoked many of these domain names. Likewise, Dutch, Swedish and
Danish speakers sometimes use .nu, as it means 'now' in these languages.
Another French-speaking example is teu.be, where "teube" can be translated by "dumb" or "dick" in
English. Louez.ça, which means «rent that», is a listing of rental properties in Montréal, Canada.
German examples are Schokola.de (chocolate), Autom.at or fals.ch (wrong).
Some organisations situated in Switzerland uses TLDs to specifically refer to their canton (like the
Belgian TLD .be for the Canton of Berne).
An Afrikaans example is dieInter.net - "die" meaning "the" in English (The Internet). Email addresses in
this domain can then be expressed as "user at the internet".
A Portuguese example is vai.lá, which is equivalent to the go.to in English. Another is notici.as, where
«noticias» means "news".
In Russian, the perevodov.net ("No translations") is a translation portal.
In Slovak, rozbaľ.to ("Unpack it") is the home page of a prepaid Internet access service.
In Slovenian, the najdi.si ("Find it yourself") is a popular local search engine.
A Gibraltarian example is gibtele.com - The phone company in Gibraltar is called Gibtelecom and they
have used the .com to their advantage.
Criticisms
Using domain hacks weakens the usefulness of country code TLDs. With domain hacks, it becomes
harder to judge the country of origin of a website by just looking at the TLD. Breaking up a domain
name to subdomains and/or the URL pathname most often renders the actual domain name meaningless
and breaks against good naming conventions.
Some domain hacks are difficult to remember until you become familiar with them, such as del.icio.us.
A common typo is to type the periods in the incorrect location. (To counteract this, del.icio.us has also
registered the delicious.com and delicio.us domain names which forward to their site.)
See also
● domain name
● top-level domain
● generic top-level domain
● country code top-level domain
Notes
1. ^ Whois domain search [4]
2. ^ Winstead, Jim. blo.gs: sold June 14, 2005.
3. ^ Schachter, Joshua. del.icio.us: y.ah.oo! December 9, 2005.
External links
Searches
● Domain Hacks - domain hack search utility
Suggestions
● Domain Hacks Suggest - 300,000+ domain hack suggestions (filtered by first letter, word length,
and TLD)
● Domain hunting - 220,000+ domain ideas (requires executing a Perl script to generate domain
hack suggestions)
Articles
● Domain Hacks & Email Hacks - domain hacks (and "email hacks") explained
● Non Dot Com Cool Domain Names
● Domain Hacks: Inventive or Poor Attempt at Being Cool? Domain hacks examined in depth by
doma.in writers
● List of domain hacks
● Coolest Hostnames on the Net (1997) list of classic domain hacks & strange hostnames & email
addresses
Registration & Hosting
● V3
● Websear.ch
● family domain name (.fami.ly)
● Arpegg.io
Typosquatting
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An incorrectly entered URL

could lead to a website
operated by a cybersquatter.
Typosquatting, also called URL hijacking, is a form of cybersquatting which relies on mistakes such
as typographical errors made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser.
Should a user accidentally enter an incorrect website address, they may be led to an alternative website
owned by a cybersquatter.
Overview
Generally, the victim site of typosquatting will be a frequently visited website. The typosquatter's URL
will usually be one of four kinds, all similar to the victim site address:
(In the following, the intended website is "example.com")
● A common misspelling of the intended site: exemple.com

● A misspelling based on typing errors: xample.com or exxample.com
● A differently phrased domain name: examples.com
● A different top-level domain: example.org
Once in the typosquatter's site, the user may also be tricked into thinking that they are in fact in the real
site; through the use of copied or similar logos, website layouts or content. Sometimes competitors of
the victim site will do this.
Alternatively, the user will be forwarded to a site of a completely different nature to what they intended.
This tactic was infamously used by John Zuccarini, who redirected domains targeting children to
pornographic websites. Sometimes, the typosquatters will use the false addresses to distribute viruses,
adware, spyware or other malware. Some are also shock sites. More common are benign domain parking
sites, selling advertising to firms based on keywords similar to the misspelled word in the domain.
As with cybersquatting in the past, the term typosquatting has been used by covetous parties in an effort
to unseat domain registrants from brandable variants of generic domain names. The shortage of poignant
and generic domain names in the coveted .com generic top-level domain has left many hopeful
registrants with no alternative but to locate catchy variants of existing generic words e.g. Orbitz.com
(popular travel site with "z" to replace the "s") in an effort to find "new land" on which to build their
website. As in the preceding example, the line between typosquatting and registering a brandable variant
of a generic domain name blurs dependent on the circumstance of each situation.
Combatting typosquatting
A victim website will usually send a cease and desist letter to the offender at first, in an attempt to quell
the activity.
It may also try to purchase the website address from the typosquatter, which could have been the
typosquatter's aim all along.
Occasionally, lawsuits will be taken against the offending site or individual.
A company may try and preempt typosquatting by obtaining a number of websites with common
misspellings and redirect them to the main, correctly spelled website. For example www.gooogle.com,
www.goolge.com, www.gogle.com www.gewgle.com, and others, all redirect to www.google.com.
Microsoft has released new software to help combat this issue. The software is called "Strider Typo-
Patrol". This is a tool that scans and shows third-party domains that are allegedly typosquatting. It also
lets parents restrict access to typo-squatting domains that show sexually oriented ads on typos of
children's web sites.
Typosquatting and the law

"Typosquatting" is a meaningless term where the law is concerned. Laws generally are not concerned
about registrations of domain names that are similar to other domain names or similar to existing
trademarks, unless some other important factor is involved.
Criminal laws are mostly silent about the registration of domain names that are typographically similar
to other names. The first (perhaps only?) example of such a criminal law is a US law making it illegal to
use a "misleading" domain name for the purpose of deceiving a person to access obscenity.
Non-criminal law is primarily concerned with unfair competition between people who register domain
names that are typographically similar to known trademarks. This is the "hook" for trademark
infringement: not simply using the same or a similar name, but using the same or a similar name for the
purpose of competition with the trademark owner. In other words, it may be perfectly acceptable to use a
domain name that is confusingly similar to an existing trademark IF the web page standing behind the
new domain name is not used to compete with the trademark owner, OR if the web page standing behind
the new domain name is used to help consumers to locate the product identified in the trademark.
Free speech, not unfair competition
On April 17, 2006, controversial evangelical Jerry Falwell failed to get the Supreme Court to review a
decision allowing Christopher Lamparello to use "www.fallwell.com". Relying on a plausible
misspelling of Falwell's name, Lamparello's gripe site presents misdirected visitors with scriptural
references that counter the fundamentalist preacher's scathing rebukes against homosexuality. The high
court let stand a 2005 Fourth Circuit finding that "the use of a mark in a domain name for a gripe site
criticizing the markholder does not constitute cybersquatting."
Mitigating in favor of Mr. Lamparello's case was that his website did not mimic Falwell's site
stylistically so as to confuse site visitors into believing that Falwell endorsed Lamparello's site content.
Further, that Lamparello's site is non-commercial preempts a claim of unfair business practices.
Whereas, a communicative forum for comment and criticism constitutes a "bona fide non-commercial or
fair use" of a trademark interest, under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA).
On his site, Lamparello provided a link to an Amazon.com webpage selling a book he favored. The
court determined this did not diminish the communicative function of his website, saying use of a
domain name to engage in criticism or commentary "even where done for profit" does not alone show a
bad faith intent to profit (Lamparello did not stand to gain financially from sales of the book at Amazon.
com).
This case demonstrated the importance of balancing the property interests of trademark owners with the
interests of Internet users who seek to make lawful uses of others' marks, “including for purposes such
as comparative advertising, comment, criticism, parody, news reporting, fair use, etc." When the alleged
infringer establishes a gripe site that criticizes the markholder, the markholder must show a “bad-faith
attempt” on the part of the infringer to profit from the misuse.
Examples of typosquatting
● Wikipedia is a victim of typosquatting: [www.wiipedia.org], [www.eikipedia.org], [www.
wilipedia.org], [en.wikipedi.org], [en.wikipediia.org] and [www.wikipedi.com] [as of 2006], are
all websites which contain pop-up ads, spyware/adware downloads, and ad-generating search
engines.
● A related gambit is obtaining "800" numbers that correspond to misspellings; a good illustration
is AT&T's sudden abandonment of "1-800-OPERATOR" and replacing it with "1-800-CALL-
ATT". Many callers would misspell operator, thus MCI Communications was raking in a lot of
business with "1-800-OPERATER", reaping the benefits of AT&T's advertising. (In both
numbers, the final "R" is superfluous.)
● The National Austrian Public Service Broadcaster "ORF" was typosquatted by 0rf.at a net art site.
● Google's anti-typosquatting defense is incomplete; as of April 2006, "http://www.goggle.com"
redirects to a rogue software vendor rather than to Google. The site attempts to spam users with a
popup and foist an executable download upon them without any further user action.
● Apparently people at gni.org are "typosquatting" Savannah, since there is an SSH server running
[1]
at savannah.gni.org.
● Domino's Pizza's UK website, www.dominos.co.uk, will redirect you to British Sky
Broadcasting's package ordering site if it is misspelled as www.dominoes.co.uk.
"Catchall" typosquatting
In addition to purchases of individual domain name, several attempts have been made by larger
corporations to profit from users' typos by redirecting them without their knowledge.
● Microsoft's Internet Explorer automatically redirects users' mistyped URL queries to their MSN
Search page. Though a user can reconfigure their browser to use a different search tool, Google,
one of MSN's biggest rivals, is not in the list. However, on their web site, Google has explained
how to make their search engine the IE default for mistyped urls.
● In 2003, top-level domain registry operator VeriSign's Site Finder automatically redirected traffic
sent to unregistered domains. This caused a fair amount of outrage from the Internet standards
community, and an emergency patch to BIND was issued to circumvent VeriSign's actions.
VeriSign disabled the service after only three weeks.
● Paxfire, a startup company, sells partner Internet service providers a tool that redirects mistyped
queries to a Paxfire-generated page with sponsored advertiser content related to the mistyped
"hotword". Revenue generated from user clicks is split between Paxfire and the Internet service
provider.
● Certain types of malware pose as browser plugins and redirect a user's web requests or search
queries without their knowledge or consent, even if the URLs themselves are properly typed.
● In August 2006, the operators of the ccTLD for the nation of Cameroon added a wildcard DNS
record for the entirety of the .cm TLD. Since .cm is a common possible typo for .com, some have
argued that this action constitutes a form of typosquatting. ICANN does not have any direct
control over what national registrars do with their ccTLDs (as it did for VeriSign).
See also
● DNS
● Top-level domain
● UDRP
● URL
● Truth in Domain Names Act
External links
● The man who owns the Internet - (CNNMONEY.com, May 22 2007) This article is about Kevin
Ham the man responsible for the Cameroon .cm wild-card redirect ploy.
● The Typo Millionaires (Slate, 11 February 2005) - This article's author identifies new forms of
typosquatting, including VeriSign's Site Finder and Paxfire.
● Slashdot discussion, Google Wins Typosquatting Dispute.
● "Typosquatting A Growth Industry"
● Strider URL Tracer with Typo-Patrol at Microsoft Research
● Strider Typo-Patrol Project at Microsoft Research
● Typosquatting and the .eu Top-Level Domain' (Droit-technologie.org, June 26, 2007)
Domain sniping
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Domain sniping is the practice of an individual registering a domain name whose registration has lapsed
in the immediate moments after expiry. This practice has largely been muted through ICANN's addition
of the Redemption Grace Period (RGP), which allows registrants 30 days to reclaim their domain name.
By law there are no perpetual rights to domain names after payment of registration fees lapses, aside
from trademark rights granted by common law or statute.
Although domain registrars often make multiple attempts to notify a registrant of a domain name's
impending expiration, a failure on the part of the original registrant to provide the registrar with accurate
contact information can make an unintended registration lapse possible. Unless the original registrant
holds a trademark or other legal entitlement to the name, they are often left without any form of recourse
in getting the domain name back. It is incumbent on registrants to be proactive in managing their name
registrations and to be good stewards of their names.
Prior to the Redemption Grace Procedure (RGP) individuals could engage in domain sniping in order to
extort money from the original registrant to buy the name back. The addition of RGP has largely abated
the ability to 'snipe' names and therefore has moved the battle for expiring domain names to the domain
registrar level, where companies such as GoDaddy or eNom retain names for auction through services
such as TDNAM or Snapnames.
Domain hijacking
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Domain hijacking is the process by which internet domain names are stolen from the rightful registrant.
Many people confuse domain hijacking with the reregistration of an expired domain by a new party. One
is a legal process and one is not. Domain hijacking is theft, while if a name owner does not renew a
name he or she is no longer the owner and it is available for someone else to register.
Domain theft
Domain theft is an aggressive form of domain hijacking that usually involves an illegal act. In most
cases, identity theft is used to trick the domain registrar into allowing the hijacker to change the
registration information to steal control of a domain from the legitimate owner.
Some registrars are quick to set things right when these cases are discovered. However, it is well
documented that some registrars will admit no fault in accepting the forged credentials and will refuse to
correct the record until forced by legal action. In many of these cases, justice is not done and the hijacker
retains control of the domain. The victims of such theft often do not have the resources or willingness to
invest the effort necessary to regain control of their domain, which may require a lawsuit or a lengthy
and time-consuming arbitration process, especially if the hijacker and victim are in different countries.
Hackers that have hijacked a domain can do anything with that name, including putting up their own
website or redirecting those who visit the address to another site.
Prevention
Extensible Provisioning Protocol is used for many TLD registries, and uses an authorization code issued
exclusively to the domain registrant as a security measure to prevent unauthorized transfers.
Some attorneys serve as webmasters to ensure the safety of their clients' domains, but a cheaper option is
a pre-pay domain recovery plan like the one offered by TROANN, the title registry of ownership for
domain names. Domain theft can not be completely avoided because the human factor (disgruntled
employees/webmaster and hackers) will always exist, but the risk is much smaller and the recovery
process is much faster and easier if you take proactive steps, like having a domain title certificate as
proof of ownership. Arbitration and litigation are available avenues for domain recovery and, under the
right facts, attorneys fees and costs can be recovered.
References
● Domain name hijacking: Incidents, threats, risks, and remedial action. A report from the ICANN
Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) 12 July 2005
See also
● Cybersquatting
● Domain tasting, also known as domain kiting
Examples of cases in which a domain was hijacked:
● sex.com
4chan
Cybersquatting
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Cybersquatting, according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer
Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from
the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain
to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.
The term is derived from "squatting", which is the act of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space
or building that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use. Cybersquatting
however, is a bit different in that the domain names that are being "squatted" are (sometimes but not
always) being paid for through the registration process by the Cybersquatters. Cybersquatters usually
ask for prices far greater than that at which they purchased it. Some cybersquatters put up derogatory
remarks about the person or company the domain is meant to represent in an effort to encourage the
subject to buy the domain from them. Others post paid links via Google and other paid advertising
networks to the very (legitimate) site that the user likely wanted, thus monetizing their squatting. As
with many controversial issues, some argue that the dividing line of cybersquatting is difficult to draw,
or that the practice is consistent with a capitalistic and free market ethos.
Cybersquatting is one of the most loosely used terms related to domain name intellectual property law
and is often incorrectly used to refer to the sale or purchase of generic domain names such as example.
com.
Legal resolution
Domain name disputes involving alleged bad-faith registration are typically resolved using the Uniform
Domain Name Resolution Policy (UDRP) process developed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN). Critics claim that the UDRP process favors large corporations and that
their decisions often go beyond the rules and intent of the dispute resolution policy. A UDRP complaint
may be initiated at UDRP proceeding with an approved dispute resolution service provider. A victim of
cybersquatting may also file an InterNIC Registrar Problem Report regarding a cybersquatter posing as a
registrar.
Court systems can also be used to sort out claims of cybersquatting, but jurisdiction is often a problem,
as different courts have ruled that the proper location for a trial is that of the plaintiff, the defendant, or
the location of the server through which the name is registered. Countries such as China and Russia do
not view cybersquatting in the same way or degree that US law does. People often choose the UDRP
(Uniform Dispute Resolution Process) created by ICANN because it is usually quicker and cheaper than
going to court, but courts can and often do overrule UDRP decisions. In Virtual Works, Inc. v.
Volkswagen of America, Inc. (a dispute over the domain vw.net), the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals
created a common law requirement that the cybersquatter exhibit a bad faith intent in order to confer
liability. This means that domain names bearing close resemblance to trademarked names are not per se
impermissible. Rather, the domain name must have been registered with the bad faith intent to later sell
it to the trademark holder.
Some countries have specific laws against cybersquatting beyond the normal rules of trademark law.
The United States, for example, has the U.S. Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) of
1999.
Under UDRP policy, successful complainants can have the names deleted or transferred to their
ownership (which means paying regular renewal fees on all the names or risk them being registered by
someone else). Under the ACPA (Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act) a cybersquatter can be
held liable for actual damages or statutory damages in the amount of a maximum of $100,000 for each
name found to be in violation.
There have been several instances of companies, individuals or governments trying to take generic
domain names away from their owners by making false claims of trademark violation. Sometimes they
are successful. This practice is called "reverse domain hijacking". For example, little known Heathrow
Land Development in Florida attempted to use their narrow one-class trademark and the UDRP process
to acquire heathrow.com.
Australia is another example - auDA requires anyone registering a .com.au Second Level Domain to
have a valid entitlement for that domain - ie. a registered business name with an Australian Business
Number (ABN) issued by the Australian Taxation Office. However, this has failed to protect Australia
from such cybersquatting acts. Any Australian citizen over the age of 16 can obtain an ABN (which is
free) and use it to register as few or as many domain names as they like.
Internationally, the United Nations copyright agency called WIPO (World Intellectual Property
Organization) has, since 1999, provided an arbitration system wherein a trademark holder can attempt to
claim a squatted site. In 2006, there were 1823 complaints filed with WIPO, which was a 25% increase
over 2005's rate. On average, 84% of claims are decided in the complaining party's favor ([1])
Notable cases
With litigation
● People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Doughney, 2001 (peta.org)

Without litigation
● The White House against Whitehouse.com and Whitehouse.org

● stevejobs.com
See also
● URL
● Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy
External links
● ICANN's page about the UDRP
● WIPO's Domain Name Dispute Resolution Service
● Experience Hendrix, L.L.C. v. Hammerton, example of a WIPO decision regarding
cybersquatting
● TaubmanSucks.com, detailed account of a cybersquatting lawsuit
● Heathrow.com arbitration decision, ruling denying a company's attempt to use a very limited
trademark to grab a domain name in which the owner had rights (as ruled by the arbitrator).
● Jennifer Lopez arbitration decision, ruling granting the entertainer's company a number of
domain names containing her trademark (as ruled by the arbitrator).
● Copywrite.org - Intellectual Property Law blog
● Cybersquatting Blog
● Nissan Motor vs. Nissan Computer, legal timeline and information regarding Nissan Motor
Company's unsuccessful cybersquatting lawsuit against the owners of the nissan.com domain
name.
Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy
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The Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) is a process established by the

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for the resolution of disputes
regarding the registration of internet domain names. The UDRP policy currently applies to all .biz, .
com, .info, .name, .net, and .org top-level domains, and some country code top-level domains.
When a registrant chooses a domain name, he or she must “represent and warrant,” among other things,
that registering the name “will not infringe upon or otherwise violate the rights of any third party,” and
agree to participate in an arbitration-like proceeding should any third party assert a claim.
In a UDRP proceeding, the panel will consider factors such as, whether the defendant registrant’s
domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark in which the complainant has rights;
whether the defendant has no rights or legitimate interests in a name; and whether the defendant
registered and is using the name in bad faith. Trademark owners sometimes found it difficult to prove
registration and use of a disputed domain name in bad faith, and therefore in other dispute resolution
policies this last requirement has been relaxed to "or" (e.g. in the dispute resolution policies applicable
to .us or .eu domain names).
The goal of the UDRP was to create a streamlined process for resolving such disputes, which would be
quicker and cheaper than a standard legal challenge. However, a party dissatisfied by a UDRP decision
may challenge the decision in court.
The UDRP process has already been used in a number of well-known cases, such as Madonna Ciccone,
p/k/a Madonna v. Dan Parisi and "Madonna.com". There the panel found against the defendant
registrant based on all three of the above factors, and ordered the domain name turned over to Madonna.
Often there is contention over similar but not identical domain names, in which the offended party files a
court action claiming trademark or copyright infringement. For example, actor Robert De Niro has
claimed ownership of all domain names incorporating the text "Tribeca" for domain names with any
content related to film festivals. In particular, he has a dispute with the owner of the website http://
[1][2]
tribeca.net. .
References
1. ^ Erik Davis. "Robert De Niro: Raging Bully?", 2 Jan 2007.
2. ^ "I am Tribeca, De Niro claims", 31 Dec 2006.
See also
● DNS
● top-level domain
● URL
● typosquatting
● cybersquatting
● Reverse domain hijacking
External links
● Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy
● All cases by name, at ICANN site
● All cases by date, at ICANN site
● Cases decided through National Arbitration Forum (searchable)
● Cases decided through WIPO
● Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre, a third UDRP service provider
● Full text search tool for UDRP decisions
● CircleID Coverage of UDRP Issues
List of most popular given names
Home | Up
The most popular given names vary nationally, regionally, and culturally. Lists of widely-used given names can consist
of those most often bestowed upon infants born within the last year, thus reflecting the current onomastic trends, or else
be composed of the personal names occurring most within the total population.
Popularity by region
The names listed in the following tables, unless otherwise noted, represent the most current top 10 breakdowns of
what newborn children are commonly being named in the various regions of the world.
Asia & Pacific
Male names
Region (year) No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 No. 5 No. 6 No. 7 No. 8 No. 9 No. 10
Northern Territory, Australia
[1] Jack James Lachlan Benjamin Joshua Ryan John Patrick Samuel William
(2005)
New South Wales, Australia
[2] Jack Lachlan William Joshua Thomas James Ryan Daniel Matthew Samuel
(2005)
Japan
Shun Takumi Shō Ren Shōta Sōta Kaito Kenta Daiki Yū
(2002)
New Zealand
[3] Joshua Jack Benjamin Samuel Daniel Jacob Ethan James Thomas Matthew
(2003)
[4] Michael Ronald Ryan Joseph Joel Jeffrey Marlon Richard Noel Jonathan
Philippines
Female names
Australia
[2] Olivia Charlotte Emily Chloe Ella Jessica Isabella Sophie Mia Brooke
(2005)
Japan
Misaki Aoi Nanami Miu Riko Miyu Moe Mitsuki Yūka Rin
(2002)
New Zealand
[3] Emma Sophie Ella Emily Jessica Hannah Olivia Grace Charlotte Georgia
(2003)
[4] Maricel Michelle Jennifer Janice Mary Grace Jocelyn Catherine Mary Anne Rowena Grace
Philippines
Europe
Male names
Austria
[5] Lukas Florian Tobias David Alexander Fabian Michael Julian Daniel Simon
(2003)
Belgium
[6] Noah Thomas Anton Lucas Louis Milan Arthur Mohamed Maxime Simon
(2005)
Czech Republic
(2005, among Jan Jakub Tomáš Adam Ondřej Martin Filip Lukáš Vojtěch Matěj
[7]
Czech-speakers)
Denmark
[8] Magnus Lucas Mathias Oliver Frederik Emil Mikkel Tobias Nikolaj Victor
(first half of 2005)
England and Wales
[9] Jack Thomas Joshua Oliver Harry James William Samuel Daniel Charlie
(2006, b.)
Estonia
(2003, among Martin Markus Aleksander Rasmus Kevin Robin Sander N/A N/A N/A
Estonian-speakers)
Finland
(2005, among Veeti Eetu Aleksi Joona Elias Juho Lauri Arttu Leevi Matias
[10]
Finnish-speakers)
France
[11] Kevin Lucas Theo Thomas Hugo Mathis Nathan Maxime Clément Louis
(2004)
Germany Lukas,
[12] Alexander Maximilian Leon Luca Paul Jonas Felix Tim David
(2005) Lucas
Hungary
[13] Bence Máté Balázs Dávid Dániel Levente Tamás Ádám Péter Gergő
(2005)
Iceland
[14] Sigurður Guðmundur Jón Gunnar Ólafur Magnús Einar Kristján Björn Bjarni
(2001)
Ireland
[15] Seán Jack Conor Adam James Daniel Cian Luke Michael Aaron
(2004)
Lithuania
(2004, total Jonas Antanas Vytautas Juozas Petras N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
[16]
population)
Lithuania
(2005, babies born) Lukas Matas Nojus Mantas Rokas Dovydas Dominykas Martynas Nedas Arnas
[16]
Malta
[17] Matthew Luke Michael Aidan Jake Jamie Andre Isaac Nathan Zac
(2005)
Netherlands
[18] Daan Sem Thomas Tim Lucas Lars Thijs Milan Jesse Bram
(2005)
Northern Ireland
[19] Jack Matthew Adam James Ryan Joshua Conor Ben Daniel Dylan
(2003)
Norway
[20] Markus Mathias Jonas Kristian Tobias Alexander Adrian Henrik Andreas Martin
(2005)
Poland
(2004, total Jan Andrzej Piotr Krzysztof Stanisław Tomasz Paweł Józef Marcin Marek
[21]
population)
Portugal
João Tiago André Pedro Ricardo José Manuel Diogo Fábio Miguel
(2003)
Scotland
[22] Lewis Jack Callum James Ryan Cameron Kyle Jamie Daniel Matthew
(2005)
Slovenia
(2006, total Franc Janez Anton Jožef Ivan Andrej Marko Jože Marjan Peter
[23]
population)
Spain
(2005, excluding
Basque Country & Alejandro Daniel Pablo David Javier Adrián Álvaro Sergio Carlos Hugo
[24]
Catalonia)
Basque Country,
Spain Iker Unai Jon Mikel Ander Asier Aitor Eneko Julen Aimar
[24]
(2005)
Catalonia, Spain
[24] Marc Alex Pau David Pol Daniel Arnau Joel Gerard Jordi
(2005)
Sweden
[25] Lucas Oscar William Elias Filip Hugo Viktor Isak Alexander Emil
(2006)
Switzerland
(2004, among
Luca Noah David Jan Joël Simon Nico Tim Jonas Lukas
German-speakers)
[26]
Turkey
[27] urooj Yusuf Furkan Mustafa Emre Bora Ahmet Yunus Abdülkadir n.a
(2000-2005)
Female names
Region (year) No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 No. 5 No. 6 No. 7 No. 8 No. 9 No.10
Austria
[5] Sarah Anna Julia Laura Lena Hannah Lisa Katharina Leonie Vanessa
(2003)
Belgium
[6] Emma Marie Laura Julie Sarah Clara Manon Léa Lisa Camille
(2004)
Czech Republic
(2005, among Czech- Tereza Eliška Adéla Natálie Anna Karolína Kristýna Aneta Nikola Kateřina
[7]
speakers)
Denmark
[8] Mathilde Emma Laura Sofie Freja Caroline Ida Sara Julie Anna
(first half of 2005)
England and Wales
[9] Olivia Grace Jessica Ruby Emily Sophie Chloe Lucy Lily Ellie
(2006)
Estonia
(2003, among Estonian- Sandra Kristina Anna Laura Maria Diana N/A N/A N/A N/A
speakers)
Finland
(2005, among Finnish- Emma Ella Siiri Aino Anni Sara Venla Aada Emilia Iida
[10]
speakers)
France
[11] Léa Manon Emma Chloé Camille Océane Clara Marie Sarah Inès
(2003)
Germany Sophie,
[12] Marie Maria Anna, Anne Leonie Lena Emily Lea, Leah Julia Laura
(2005) Sofie
Hungary
[13] Anna Viktória Réka Vivien Zsófia Petra Dorina Fanni Boglárka Eszter
(2005)
Iceland
[14] Anna Sara Katrín Guðrún María Telma Kristín Birta Eva Helga
(2000-2004)
Ireland
[15] Emma Sarah Katie Amy Aoife Ciara Sophie Chloe Leah Ella
(2005)
Lithuania
[16] Ona Janina Irena Elena Danutė Regina Aldona Marija
(2004, total population)
Lithuania
[16] Gabija Kamilė Emilija Gabrielė Ugnė Austėja Viktorija Evelina Augustė Rugilė
(2005, babies born)
Malta
[17] Maria Martina Amy Gulia Shania Maia Catherine Emma Nicole Michela
(2005)
Netherlands
[18] Sanne Emma Anna Iris Anouk Melissa Eva Julia Lotte Isa
(2005)
Northern Ireland
[19] Emma Katie Chloe Caitlin Amy Ellie Rachel Sarah Megan Hannah
(2003)
Norway
[20] Emma Thea Ida Sara Julie Emilie Hanna Nora Malin Ingrid
(2005)
Poland
[21] Anna Maria Katarzyna Małgorzata Agnieszka Krystyna Barbara Ewa Elżbieta Zofia
Portugal
Maria Joana Ana Catarina Inês Teresa Isabel Margarida Carolina Filipa
(2003)
Scotland
[22] Sophie Emma Ellie Amy Erin Lucy Katie Chloe Rebecca Emily
(2005)
Slovenia
[23] Marija Ana Irena Jožefa Maja Frančiška Mojca Mateja Ivana Nataša
Spain
(2005, excluding Basque Lucía María Paula Laura Marta Andrea Alba Sara Claudia Ana
[24]
Country & Catalonia)
Basque Country, Spain
[24] Ana Irati Leire Izaro Naroa Maria Nerea June Paula Nahia
(2005)
Catalonia, Spain
[24] Paula Maria Carla Laura Laia Julia Alba Marta Claudia Andrea
(2005)
Sweden
[25] Emma Maja Agnes Julia Alva Linnéa Wilma Ida Alice Elin
(2006, )
Switzerland
(2004, among German- Lea Anna Laura Leonie Julia Lara Chiara Nina Jana Vanessa
[26]
speakers)
Turkey
[27] Zeynep Merve Elif Irem Fatma n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a n.a
(2000-2005)
North & South America
Male names
Brazil
[28] João Gabriel Pedro Lucas Matheus Guilherme Luiz Gustavo Rafael Vinícius
(2006)
Canada
[29] Justin Joshua Matthew Jacob Ryan Logan Nicholas Tyler Dylan Connor
(2003, among Anglophones)
British Columbia, Canada
[30] Ethan Joshua Matthew Jacob Nathan Ryan Alexander Liam Nicholas Noah
(2005)
Québec, Canada
[31] Samuel William Alexis Gabriel Jeremy Xavier Felix Thomas Antoine Olivier
(2004)
Chile
[32] Benjamín Matías Vicente Martín Sebastián Diego Nicolás Juan José Cristóbal
(2005)
Buenos Aires, Argentina
[33] Santiago Lautaro Matías Tomás Lucas Joaquín Franco Agustín Thiago Nicolás
(2006)
Female names
Brazil
[34] Maria Ana Júlia Letícia Vitória Giovanna Yasmin Beatriz Mariana Larissa
(2006)
Canada
(2003, among English-speakers) Emily Emma Madison Sarah Hannah Sydney Megan Ashley Taylor Paige
[29]
British Columbia, Canada

[30] Emma Emily Olivia Hannah Madison Ava Sarah Ella Isabella Grace
(2005)
Québec, Canada
[31] Lea Rosalie Noemie Laurence Jade Megane Sarah Audrey Camille Coralie
(2004)
Chile
[32] Constanza Catalina Valentina Javiera Martina Sofía María Antonia Fernanda Francisca
(2005)
Buenos Aires, Argentina
[33] Sofía Camila Valentina Martina Agustina Micaela Lucía Milagros Victoria Julieta
(2006)
United States
Every year, the U.S. Social Security's Office of the Chief Actuary publishes a list of the most popular names given at birth
for males and females in the U.S. (website). The 2006 list was released May 11, 2007.
References
1. ^ Northern Territory Department of Justice. (January 19, 2006). Most Popular Names. Retrieved June 17, 2006.
ab
2. ^ NSW Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages. (2006). Popular Baby Names. Retrieved June 17, 2006.
ab
3. ^ Statistics New Zealand. (n.d.). "Top 100 babies' names for girls and boys, 1999-2003." Retrieved June 17, 2006.
ab
4. ^ Brunner, René. (n.d.). "Philippine Names." Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
5. ^ Statistics Austria. (July 12, 2005). "Lukas und Anna 2004 an erster Stelle der beliebtesten Babynamen in Österreich."
Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
6. ^ Statistics Belgium. Voornamen van jongens en meisjes - België, Vlaanderen, Wallonië en Brussel. Retrieved March 11,
2007.
ab
7. ^ Czech Statistical Office. (September 20, 2005). Nejčastější jména dětí v lednu 2005. Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
8. ^ Statistics Denmark. (January, 13 2006). Fornavne for børn født i 1. halvår 2005. Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
9. ^ National Statistics Online news release (PDF). Retrieved December 20, 2006.
ab
10. ^ The Population Register Centre. (n.d.). Suosituimmat suomenkielisten lasten etunimet 2005.Ensimmäiset nimet. Retrieved
June 16, 2006.
ab
11. ^ "Top Most Popular Names for Births in France 2004." (n.d.). Behind the Name. Retrieved March 11, 2007.
ab
12. ^ Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache. (n.d.). Vornamenliste 2005. Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
13. ^ "Továbbra is a Bence és az Anna a legkedveltebb keresztnév." (January 26, 2006). Index. Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
14. ^ Statistics Iceland. (December 31, 2004). Forenames in the National Register of Persons. Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
15. ^ Central Statistics Office. (n.d.). Statistics: Top 25 Babies' Names. Retrieved June 16, 2006.
abcd
16. ^ Department of Statistics to the Government of the Republic of Lithuania (Statistics Lithuania). (February 11, 2006).
Įdomioji statistika. Retrieved July 30, 2006.
ab
17. ^ National Statistics Office, Malta. (June 16, 2006). Babies' Names: 2004-2005. Retrieved February 6, 2007.
ab
18. ^ Sociale Verzekeringsbank. (n.d.). Kindernamen top 20. Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
19. ^ Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. (January 2, 2004). Jack and Emma were the most popular first names in
Northern Ireland in 2003. Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
20. ^ Statistics Norway. (n.d.). Name statistics. Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
21. ^ Ministry of Interior and Administration of the Republic of Poland. (n.d.). STATYSTYKA
50 NAJPOPULARNIEJSZYCH IMION W POLSCE W PODZIALE NA PŁE. Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
22. ^ General Register Office for Scotland. The most popular names in Scotland, 2005. Retrieved October 22, 2006.
ab
23. ^ Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia. Most frequent names by sex. Retrieved 2006-12-26.
abcdef
24. ^ National Statistics Institute. (n.d.). Births according to name of newborn. Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
25. ^ Statistics Sweden. (n.d.). Namnstatistik. Retrieved March 18, 2007.
ab
26. ^ Swiss Federal Statistical Office. (n.d.). Vornamen-Hitparade. Retrieved June 17, 2006.
ab
27. ^ Nüfus ve Vatandaşlık İşleri Genel Müdürlüğü. (n.d.). İsim İstatistikleri. Retrieved June 16, 2006.
28. ^ [1]
ab
29. ^ "Popular Baby Names in Canada for 2004." (n.d.). Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
30. ^ British Columbia Vital Statistics Agency. (n.d.). Most Popular Baby Names in British Columbia. Retrieved June 17, 2006.
ab
31. ^ Olejarczyk, Anna. (July, 2005).Top 100 Baby Names in Canada. Today's Parent. Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
32. ^ Registro Civil de Chile. (2005). Nombres más Comunes 2005. Retrieved June 16, 2006.
ab
33. ^ La Nación. Santiago y Sofía, los nombres más elegidos en 2006 por los porteños. Retrieved December 31, 2006.
34. ^ [2]
External links
Links to government statistics on popularity of names

Australia
● Queensland list
● Australian Capital Territory list
● Northern Territory list
● South Australian list under Births Deaths & Marriages.
● Tasmania doesn't appear to have statistics published online
● Victorian list
● Western Australia
United States
● Link to Social Security Administration which has stats on US baby names
Links to private websites that give statistics on names
● Baby Name Facts

● Top Baby Names by Decade
● Top 100 Baby Names of the world
● Indian Baby Names
● Most popular first and last names nationally and by state
Home | Up | Domain name speculation | Name generator | Domain parking | Domain hack | Typosquatting | Domain sniping
| Domain hijacking | Cybersquatting | Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy | List of most popular given names
.com
Home | Up
.com
Introduced 1985
TLD type Generic top-level domain
Status Active
Registry VeriSign
Sponsor None
Intended use Commercial entities (worldwide)
Used for all sorts of sites, commercial or
Actual use
not
Registration restrictions None
Structure Registrations at second level permitted
RFC 920; RFC 1591; ICANN registry
Documents
agreement
Dispute policies UDRP
Web site VeriSign COM NET Registry
.com (commercial) is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used on the Internet's Domain Name System.
It was one of the original top-level domains (TLDs), established in January 1985, and has grown to be
the largest TLD in use. It was originally administered by the United States Department of Defense. The
DoD contracted its maintenance to Stanford Research Institute. On January 1, 1993 the National Science
Foundation assumed responsibility for its maintenance, as .com was primarily being used for non-
defense interests. The NSF contracted its maintenance to Network Solutions. In 1995 the NSF
authorized NSI to begin charging registrants (of .org and .net as well as .com) an annual fee, for the first-
time since its inception. Initially it was $50 per year, with $35 going to NSI, and $15 going to a
government fund. New registrations had to pay for the first two years, making the new-domain
registration fee $100. In 1997 the United States Department of Commerce assumed authority over it
(along with the rest of the generic top level domains). It is currently operated by VeriSign, which had
acquired Network Solutions. (VeriSign later spun off Network Solutions' non-registry functions into the
current company which continues as a registrar.) In the English language it is consistently pronounced as
a word, dot-com, and has entered common parlance this way.
Although .com domains are officially intended to designate commercial entities (others such as
government agencies or educational institutions have different top-level domains assigned to them),
there has been no restriction on who can register .com domains since the mid-1990s. The opening of the .
com registry to the public coincided with the commercialization and popularization of the Internet, and .
com quickly became the most common top-level domain for websites. Many companies which
flourished in the period between 1997-2001 (the time known as the "dot-com bubble") went so far as to
incorporate .com into the company name; these became known as dot-coms or dot-com companies. The
introduction of .biz in 2001, which is restricted to businesses, has had little impact on the popularity of .
com.
Although companies anywhere in the world can register .com domains, many countries have a second-
level domain with a similar purpose under their own ccTLD. Such second-level domains are usually of
the form .com.xx or .co.xx, where xx is the ccTLD. Argentina (.com.ar), Japan (.co.jp), New Zealand (.
co.nz), India (.co.in), the People's Republic of China (.com.cn), Pakistan (.com.pk), and the United
Kingdom (.co.uk) are all examples.
Many noncommercial sites, such as those of nonprofit organizations or governments, use .com
addresses. Some consider this to be contrary to the domain's original purpose and might say that a .org, .
gov, or other more specific TLD might be more appropriate for such sites. However, many organizations
prefer the recognizability of a .com domain to a less familiar one. As well, the original purposes of many
of the top level domains have become irrelevant without restrictions on registrations.
Registrations are processed via registrars accredited by ICANN; internationalized domain names are
also accepted.
Transfer Procedures
Domains can be transferred between registrars. Prior to October 2006 the procedure used by Verisign
was complex and unreliable - requiring a notary public to verify the identity of the registrant requesting
a domain transfer. In October 2006, a new procedure, requiring the losing registrar to provide an
authorization code on instruction from the registrant (also known as EPP code) was introduced by
Verisign to reduce the incidence of domain hijacking.
List of oldest .com domains

The following are the 100 oldest still-existing registered .com domains [1]:
Rank Create date Domain name Rank Create date Domain name
1 March 15, 1985 symbolics.com 50 December 11, 1986 CCUR.com

2 April 24, 1985 BBN.com 50 December 11, 1986 CI.com
3 May 24, 1985 think.com 50 December 11, 1986 convergent.com
4 July 11, 1985 MCC.com 50 December 11, 1986 DG.com
5 September 30, 1985 DEC.com 50 December 11, 1986 peregrine.com
6 November 7, 1985 northrop.com 50 December 11, 1986 quad.com
7 January 9, 1986 xerox.com 50 December 11, 1986 SQ.com
8 January 17, 1986 SRI.com 50 December 11, 1986 tandy.com
9 March 3, 1986 HP.com 50 December 11, 1986 TTI.com
10 March 5, 1986 bellcore.com 50 December 11, 1986 unisys.com
11 March 19, 1986 IBM.com 61 January 19, 1987 CGI.com
11 March 19, 1986 sun.com 61 January 19, 1987 CTS.com
13 March 25, 1986 intel.com 61 January 19, 1987 SPDCC.com
13 March 25, 1986 TI.com 64 February 19, 1987 apple.com
15 April 25, 1986 ATT.com 65 March 4, 1987 NMA.com
16 May 8, 1986 GMR.com 65 March 4, 1987 prime.com
16 May 8, 1986 tek.com 67 April 4, 1987 philips.com
18 July 10, 1986 FMC.com 68 April 23, 1987 datacube.com
18 July 10, 1986 UB.com 68 April 23, 1987 KAI.com
20 August 5, 1986 bell-atl.com 68 April 23, 1987 TIC.com
20 August 5, 1986 GE.com 68 April 23, 1987 vine.com
20 August 5, 1986 grebyn.com 72 April 30, 1987 NCR.com
20 August 5, 1986 ISC.com 73 May 14, 1987 cisco.com
20 August 5, 1986 NSC.com 73 May 14, 1987 RDL.com
20 August 5, 1986 stargate.com 75 May 20, 1987 SLB.com
26 September 2, 1986 boeing.com 76 May 27, 1987 parcplace.com
27 September 18, 1986 ITCorp.com 76 May 27, 1987 UTC.com
28 September 29, 1986 siemens.com 78 June 26, 1987 IDE.com
29 October 18, 1986 pyramid.com 79 July 9, 1987 TRW.com
30 October 27, 1986 alphaDC.com 80 July 13, 1987 unipress.com
30 October 27, 1986 BDM.com 81 July 27, 1987 dupont.com
30 October 27, 1986 fluke.com 81 July 27, 1987 lockheed.com
30 October 27, 1986 inmet.com 83 July 28, 1987 rosetta.com
30 October 27, 1986 kesmai.com 84 August 18, 1987 toad.com
30 October 27, 1986 mentor.com 85 August 31, 1987 quick.com
30 October 27, 1986 NEC.com 86 September 3, 1987 allied.com
30 October 27, 1986 ray.com 86 September 3, 1987 DSC.com
30 October 27, 1986 rosemount.com 86 September 3, 1987 SCO.com
30 October 27, 1986 vortex.com 89 September 22, 1987 gene.com
40 November 5, 1986 alcoa.com 89 September 22, 1987 KCCS.com
40 November 5, 1986 GTE.com 89 September 22, 1987 spectra.com
42 November 17, 1986 adobe.com 89 September 22, 1987 WLK.com
42 November 17, 1986 AMD.com 93 September 30, 1987 mentat.com
42 November 17, 1986 DAS.com 94 October 14, 1987 WYSE.com
42 November 17, 1986 data-IO.com 95 November 2, 1987 CFG.com
42 November 17, 1986 octopus.com 96 November 9, 1987 marble.com
42 November 17, 1986 portal.com 97 November 16, 1987 cayman.com
42 November 17, 1986 teltone.com 97 November 16, 1987 entity.com
42 December 11, 1986 3Com.com 99 November 24, 1987 KSR.com
50 December 11, 1986 amdahl.com 100 November 30, 1987 NYNEXST.com
External links
● IANA .com whois information
● List of .com accredited registrars
Home | Up
Generic top-level domain
Home | Up | .com
A generic top-level domain (gTLD) is a top-level domain used (at least in theory) by a particular class
of organization. These are three or more letters long, and are named for the type of organization that
they represent (for example, .com for commercial organizations). The following gTLDs currently exist
[1]
(as does .arpa, which is sometimes considered a gTLD):
● .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 post-secondary educational establishments
.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
.tel - for services involving connections between the telephone network and the Internet (added
March 2, 2007)
.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
.geo - for geographically related sites
.cym - for Welsh language/culture
History
When generic top-level domains were first implemented, in January 1985, there were six:
● .com
.edu
.gov
.mil
.net
.org
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 was also originally planned to be 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, which led to the use of .ip6.arpa for IPv6 reverse lookups.
By the mid-1990s there was pressure for more gTLDs to be introduced. Jon Postel, as head of IANA,
invited applications from interested parties.[2] In early 1995, Postel created "Draft Postel", an Internet
draft containing the procedures to create new domain name registries and new TLDs. Draft Postel
created a number of small committees to approve the new TLDs. Because of the increasing interest, a
number of large organizations took over the process under the Internet Society's umbrella. This second
attempt involved the setting up of a temporary organization called the International Ad Hoc Committee
(IAHC). On February 4, 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:
● .aero
.biz
.coop
.info
.museum
.name
.pro
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 domains (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:
● .cat (now live)

.jobs (now live)
.mobi (now live)
.post
.tel
.travel (now live)
.xxx (approval revoked by ICANN)
Proposals for .mail were still under consideration. There was also a second proposal for .tel.
Unofficial TLDs and proposals

Main article: Proposed top-level domain
Various organizations and businesses have proposed additional TLDs, and some have created unofficial
implementations of them, which are not generally functional. These include .berlin,[3] .sco,[4] .gal,[5] .
bzh,[6] and many others.
Pseudo top-level domains

Main article: pseudo top-level domain
A number of pseudo top-level domains have been defined at various times. Although these pseudo-
TLDs look like top-level domains, and serve the same syntactic function in creating names for network
endpoints, they have no meaning in the global Domain Name System and are (or were) used only for
specialist purposes.
Although they have no official status, they are generally regarded as having been unofficially
"grandfathered", and are unlikely ever to be allocated as top-level domains.
Alternative DNS roots

A number of companies have set up their own DNS systems which purport to expand or replace the
official DNS root system, and thus to provide their own top-level domains. The article alternative DNS
root covers these in more detail.
References
1. ^ Generic Top-Level Domains, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
2. ^ The IANA's File of iTLD Requests
3. ^ .berlin - The Berliners' identity in the Internet
4. ^ dotSCO - The Campaign for a .sco Internet Domain
5. ^ Asociación Puntogal - Inicio
6. ^ .BZH • Association pointBZH for the creation of a Breton domain
External links
● IANA's gTLDs information page
Sponsored top-level domain
Home | Up
A sponsored top-level domain is a generic top-level domain proposed by an independent agency, with
that agency establishing and enforcing rules restricting the eligibility of registrants to use the TLD. For
example, the .aero TLD is sponsored by the Société Internationale de Télécommunications
Aéronautiques, who limits registrations to members of the air-transport industry.
TLD Eligibility Sponsors

Current sponsored TLDs
Société Internationale de Télécommunications
.aero Members of the air-transport industry
Aéronautiques
.coop Cooperative associations Dot Cooperation LLC
.museum Museums Museum Domain Management Association
Credentialed professionals and related
.pro Registry Services Corporation
entities
Travel agents, airlines, hoteliers,
.travel The Travel Partnership
tourism bureaus, etc.
.cat Catalan language and culture
.jobs Employment-related sites
.mobi Mobile devices and services for them
Internet-based voice/data/text
.tel Telname Limited
communication
Pending sponsored TLDs
.post Postal agencies and similar businesses Universal Postal Union
Rejected sponsored TLDs
.xxx Sexually explicit material ICM Registry, Inc
There are also non-sponsored generic TLDs which are restricted by other criteria, including .edu (United
States accredited colleges), .mil (the United States military), .gov (the United States government), .int
(organisations formed by international treaty), and .biz (businesses engaging in commerce on the
internet).
Future Top-Level-Domain candidates can be found at Upcoming new Top-Level-Domains

List of Internet top-level domains
Home | Up
The following is a list of currently existing Internet Top-level domains (TLDs). See top-level domain
for information on the concept.
iTLD Entity Notes

.arpa Address and Routing Parameter Area This is an internet infrastructure TLD.
Diagnostic marker to indicate a root zone load was not
.root N/A
truncated.
gTLD Entity Notes
Must verify eligibility for registration; only those in
.aero air-transport industry various categories of air-travel-related entities may
register.
This is a TLD for companies, organizations, and
.asia Asia-Pacific region individuals based in the region of Asia, Australia, and
the Pacific.
This is an open TLD; any person or entity is permitted
to register; however, registrations may be challenged
.biz business
later if they are not by commercial entities in
accordance with the domain's charter.
This is a TLD for websites in the Catalan language or
.cat Catalan
related to Catalan culture.
.com commercial
to register.
The .coop TLD is limited to cooperatives as defined by
.coop cooperatives
the Rochdale Principles.
The .edu TLD is limited to institutions of learning
.edu educational (mostly U.S.), such as 2 and 4-year colleges and
universities.
The .gov TLD is limited to U.S. governmental entities
.gov governmental
and agencies (commonly federal-level).
.info information
to register.
The .int TLD is strictly limited to organizations,
.int international organizations offices, and programs which are endorsed by a treaty
between two or more nations.
The .jobs TLD is designed to be added after the names
of established companies with jobs to advertise. At this
.jobs companies
time, owners of a "company.jobs" domain are not
permitted to post jobs of third party employers.
.mil United States Military The .mil TLD is limited to use by the U.S. military.
Must be used for mobile-compatible sites in accordance
.mobi mobile devices
with standards.
.museum museums Must be verified as a legitimate museum.
to register; however, registrations may be challenged
.name individuals, by name later if they are not by individuals (or the owners of
fictional characters) in accordance with the domain's
charter
.net network
to register.
.org organization
to register.
Currently, .pro is reserved for licensed doctors,
attorneys, and certified public accountants only. A
.pro professions
professional seeking to register a .pro domain must
provide their registrar with the appropriate credentials.
.tel Internet communication services
.travel travel and travel-agency related sites Must be verified as a legitimate travel-related entity.
ccTLD Country/dependency/region Notes
.ac Ascension Island

.ad Andorra
.ae United Arab Emirates
.af Afghanistan
.ag Antigua and Barbuda
.ai Anguilla
.al Albania
.am Armenia
.an Netherlands Antilles
.ao Angola
.aq Antarctica Defined as per the Antarctic Treaty as everything south of latitude 60°S
.ar Argentina
.as American Samoa
.at Austria
.au Australia Includes Ashmore and Cartier Islands and Coral Sea Islands
.aw Aruba
.ax Åland
.az Azerbaijan
.ba Bosnia and Herzegovina
.bb Barbados
.bd Bangladesh
.be Belgium
.bf Burkina Faso
.bg Bulgaria
.bh Bahrain
.bi Burundi
.bj Benin
.bm Bermuda
.bn Brunei Darussalam
.bo Bolivia
.br Brazil
.bs Bahamas
.bt Bhutan
.bv Bouvet Island Not in use (Norwegian dependency; see .no)
.bw Botswana
.by Belarus
.bz Belize
.ca Canada
.cc Cocos (Keeling) Islands
.cd Democratic Republic of the Congo Formerly Zaire
.cf Central African Republic
.cg Republic of the Congo
.ch Switzerland (Confoederatio Helvetica)
.ci Côte d'Ivoire
.ck Cook Islands
.cl Chile
.cm Cameroon
.cn China, mainland Mainland China only: Hong Kong and Macau use separate TLDs.
.co Colombia
.cr Costa Rica
.cu Cuba
.cv Cape Verde
.cx Christmas Island
.cy Cyprus
.cz Czech Republic
.de Germany (Deutschland)
.dj Djibouti
.dk Denmark
.dm Dominica
.do Dominican Republic
.dz Algeria (Dzayer) Not available for private use
.ec Ecuador
.ee Estonia
.eg Egypt
.er Eritrea
.es Spain (España)
.et Ethiopia
.eu European Union Restricted to companies and individuals in the European Union
.fi Finland
.fj Fiji
.fk Falkland Islands
.fm Federated States of Micronesia Used for some radio related websites outside Micronesia
.fo Faroe Islands
.fr France Can only be used by organisations or persons with a presence in France.
.ga Gabon
.gb Great Britain Seldom used; the primary ccTLD used is .uk for United Kingdom
.gd Grenada
.ge Georgia
.gf French Guiana
.gg Guernsey
.gh Ghana
.gi Gibraltar
.gl Greenland
.gm The Gambia
.gn Guinea
.gp Guadeloupe
.gq Equatorial Guinea
.gr Greece
.gs South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
.gt Guatemala
.gu Guam
.gw Guinea-Bissau
.gy Guyana
.hk Hong Kong Special administrative region of the People's Republic of China.
.hm Heard Island and McDonald Islands
.hn Honduras
.hr Croatia (Hrvatska)
.ht Haiti
.hu Hungary
.id Indonesia
.ie Ireland (Éire)
.il Israel
.im Isle of Man
.in India Under INRegistry since April 2005 except: gov.in, mil.in, ac.in, edu.in, res.in
.io British Indian Ocean Territory
.iq Iraq
.ir Iran
.is Iceland (Ísland)
.it Italy Restricted to companies and individuals in the European Union
.je Jersey
.jm Jamaica
.jo Jordan
.jp Japan
.ke Kenya
.kg Kyrgyzstan
.kh Cambodia (Khmer)
.ki Kiribati
.km Comoros
.kn Saint Kitts and Nevis
.kr South Korea
.kw Kuwait
.ky Cayman Islands
.kz Kazakhstan
.la Laos Currently being marketed as the official domain for Los Angeles.
.lb Lebanon
.lc Saint Lucia
.li Liechtenstein
.lk Sri Lanka
.lr Liberia
.ls Lesotho
.lt Lithuania
.lu Luxembourg
.lv Latvia
.ly Libya
.ma Morocco Used for a couple of Hungarian language websites, because in Hungarian 'ma' means
'today'.
.mc Monaco
.md Moldova
.mg Madagascar
.mh Marshall Islands
.mk Republic of Macedonia
.ml Mali
.mm Myanmar
.mn Mongolia
.mo Macau Special administrative region of the People's Republic of China.
.mp Northern Mariana Islands
.mq Martinique
.mr Mauritania
.ms Montserrat
.mt Malta
.mu Mauritius
.mv Maldives
.mw Malawi
.mx Mexico
.my Malaysia
.mz Mozambique
.na Namibia
.nc New Caledonia
.ne Niger
.nf Norfolk Island
.ng Nigeria
.ni Nicaragua
.nl Netherlands
.no Norway Must be registered with a company in Norway to register.
.np Nepal
.nr Nauru
.nu Niue Commonly used for Scandinavian and Dutch websites, because in those languages 'nu' means
'now'.
.nz New Zealand
.om Oman
.pa Panama
.pe Peru
.pf French Polynesia With Clipperton Island
.pg Papua New Guinea
.ph Philippines
.pk Pakistan
.pl Poland
.pm Saint-Pierre and Miquelon
.pn Pitcairn Islands
.pr Puerto Rico
.ps Palestinian territories PA-controlled West Bank and Gaza Strip
.pt Portugal Only available for Portuguese registered brands and companies
.pw Palau
.py Paraguay
.qa Qatar
.re Réunion
.ro Romania
.ru Russia
.rw Rwanda
.sa Saudi Arabia
.sb Solomon Islands
.sc Seychelles
.sd Sudan
.se Sweden
.sg Singapore
.sh Saint Helena
.si Slovenia
.sj Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands Not in use (Norwegian dependencies; see .no)
.sk Slovakia
.sl Sierra Leone
.sm San Marino
.sn Senegal
.so Somalia
.sr Suriname
.st São Tomé and Príncipe
.su former Soviet Union Still in use
.sv El Salvador
.sy Syria
.sz Swaziland
.tc Turks and Caicos Islands
.td Chad
.tf French Southern and Antarctic Lands
.tg Togo
.th Thailand
.tj Tajikistan
.tk Tokelau Also used as a free domain service to the public
.tl East Timor Old code .tp is still in use
.tm Turkmenistan
.tn Tunisia
.to Tonga
.tp East Timor ISO code has changed to TL; .tl is now assigned but .tp is still in use
.tr Turkey
.tt Trinidad and Tobago
.tv Tuvalu Much used by television broadcasters. Also sold as advertising domains
.tw Taiwan, Republic of China Used in the Republic of China, namely Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and
Matsu.
.tz Tanzania
.ua Ukraine
.ug Uganda
.uk United Kingdom
.um United States Minor Outlying Islands
.us United States of America Commonly used by U.S. State and local governments instead of .gov TLD
.uy Uruguay
.uz Uzbekistan
.va Vatican City State
.vc Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
.ve Venezuela
.vg British Virgin Islands
.vi U.S. Virgin Islands
.vn Vietnam
.vu Vanuatu
.wf Wallis and Futuna
.ws Samoa Formerly Western Samoa
.ye Yemen
.yt Mayotte
.yu Yugoslavia Now used for Serbia and Montenegro
.za South Africa (Zuid-Afrika)
.zm Zambia
.zw Zimbabwe
See also
● Generic top-level domain
● Country code top-level domain
External links
● IANA's information on TLDs
● IANA's information on ccTLDs
● The Internet Domain Survey
Proposed top-level domain
Home | Up
There are several proposed top-level domains which have not yet been approved by ICANN, as of
2007:
● .berlin
.bzh
.cym
.gal
.geo
.kid
.kids
.lat
.mail
.nyc
.post
.sco
.web
.xxx
External Links
● ICANN Proposed Top-Level Domain Registry Service
Pseudo top-level domain
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A number of pseudo top-level domains to be used in naming computers have been defined at various
times. These "pseudo-TLDs" include .bitnet, .csnet, .local, .onion and .uucp. Although these pseudo-
TLDs look like top-level domains, and serve the same syntactic function in creating names for network
endpoints, they have no meaning in the global Domain Name System and are (or were) used only for
specialist purposes; typically for addressing machines that were not reachable via the Internet Protocol
for use in services such as E-mail and Usenet via UUCP.
Although they have no official status, they are generally regarded as having been unofficially
"grandfathered", and are unlikely ever to be allocated as top-level domains.
.arpa is unique in having been a pseudo-top-level domain, formerly used by ARPA, that has now
become a real top-level domain that is defined in the Internet DNS root for use as an infrastructure top-
level domain.
Second-level domain
Home | Up | Single-letter second-level domains
In the Domain Name System (DNS) hierarchy, a second-level domain (SLD) is a domain that is
directly below a top-level domain (TLD). For example, in wikipedia.org, wikipedia is the
second-level domain of the .org TLD.
Second-level domains commonly refer to the organization that registered the domain name with a
domain name registrar. Some domain name registries introduce a second-level hierarchy to a TLD that
indicates the type of organization intended to register an SLD under it. For example, in the .uk
namespace a college or other academic institution would register under the .ac.uk ccSLD, while
companies would register under .co.uk.
See also
● Subdomain
● Country code top-level domain
● Single-letter second-level domains
Single-letter second-level domains
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Single-letter second-level domains are domain names in which the second-level domain consists of
only one letter, such as x.org.
Such domains are rare, as on December 1, 1993, IANA explicitly reserved all single letter and single
digit second-level domain names in the TLDs .com, .net, and .org. This was done in case the registries
for these domains became overloaded. Recently, ICANN has considered auctioning off their domains.
However, the few such domains that were already assigned were not recalled; They were grandfathered
in and therefore were not affected by the restrictions that have existed since.
Domain 1993 Owner Current Owner

Future Media
i.net INet Solutions Ltd
Architects
Qwest
q.com JG
Communications
q.net Q Net "Q Networks"
x.com Weinstein & DePaolis PayPal
x.org The Open Group The Open Group
z.com HomePage.com Nissan
Of the above addresses, as of December 2005 only one, x.org, actually hosts a Web site directly in the
single-letter domain in question. Three others redirect to sites in different domains, and one, q.net does
not appear to be active for Web use.
Two-letter domain names

Two-letter domain names are also restricted to prevent confusion with country-codes. However, this
restriction was enacted long after domain names became popular, so there are many existing
registrations in the old top-level domains, though they are prevented in most of the new ones such as .
info. Several notable examples are un.org, ba.com, ae.com, sf.net, and tv.com.[1]
In some new TLDs, special exceptions were made to permit two-letter domains for particular purposes;
for instance, in the .aero domain the domains are reserved for airlines identified by their two-letter
codes, such as aa.aero for American Airlines.
Controversy
With the 2005 announcement that registration of the remaining single-letter names might become
available, some companies have begun jockeying into position to claim them by claiming to own
trademark rights over single letters used in such a context. U Magazine has gone so far as to re-brand its
Web site as "U.com", with a ™ sign, in online logos and captions[1] even though it is not actually at that
address; and they have sent an intimidating letter to ICANN attempting to jump the queue for
registration of this name.
External links
● ICANN - Reserved domain names
Whois links
● i.net
● q.com
● q.net
● x.com
● x.org
● z.com
Home | Up
Domain name registrar
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A domain name registrar is a company accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN) and/or by a national ccTLD authority to register Internet domain names. ICANN has
authority over gTLDs, or Generic Top Level Domains. Examples of gTLDs include .com, .net and .org.
ICANN does not have authority over ccTLDs, or Country Code Top-Level Domains, though it is quite
common for domain name registrars to offer ccTLD registration services as well. Most registrars provide
DNS hosting service, but this is not required, and is often considered a separate service.
History
Until 1999, there was no Shared Registration System (SRS). Network Solutions (NSI) operated the .
com, .net, and .org registries, and was the de jure registrar and registry. However, several companies had
set up as de facto registrars, including NetNames, who invented the idea of a commercial standalone
domain name registration service in 1996. Registrars formed another link in the food chain, introducing
the concept of domain name sales, effectively introducing the wholesale model into the industry. NSI
followed suit, forcing the issue of separation of Registry and Registrar. In October 1998, following
pressure from the growing domain name registration business and other interested parties, NSI's
agreement with the US Department of Commerce was amended, requiring the creation of an SRS that
supported multiple registrars. The SRS officially opened on November 30, 1999 under the supervision
of ICANN, though there had been several testbed registrars using the system since March 11, 1999.
Since then, over 500 registrars have entered the market for domain name registration services.
Designated registrar
An end-user alone, cannot register and manage their domain name information with ICANN. A
designated registrar must be chosen to have one's domain names registered and managed with ICANN
on their behalf. Prior to 1999, the only .com registrar was NSI, but after the approval of the SRS, this
opened up the opportunity for other companies to be designated as registrars.
Only one designated registrar may modify or delete information about a domain name. The competition
that SRS created enables the end user to choose from many registrars offering different services at
varying prices. It is not unusual for an end user to wish to switch registrars. Thus, there is the domain
name transfer clause.
When a registrar registers a .com domain name for the end-user, it must pay a maximum annual fee of
US$6.00 to VeriSign and a US$0.25 administration fee to ICANN. VeriSign is the registry manager for .
com gTLD. Low cost bulk registrars like Go Daddy and Tucows must manage their margin after paying
these fees and their equipment cost. Therefore, the barrier for entry into the bulk registrar industry is
high for new companies without an existing customer base.
Domain name transfers
Domain name transfers is the act of designating a new registrar with the authority to add, modify, and
delete information about the domain name. The usual process of a domain name transfer is:
1. The end user contacts the new registrar with the wish to transfer the domain name to their service
2. The new registrar will contact the old registrar with this information
3. The old registrar will contact the end user to confirm the authenticity of this request
4. The old registrar will release authority to the new registrar
5. The new registrar will notify the end user of transfer completion
After this process, the new registrar becomes one's designated registrar and all correspondence shall be
done with them.
Transfer scams
With the introduction of SRS, many smaller registrars had to compete with the de facto standard, NSI.
Some companies offered value added services or used viral marketing. Some companies decided to trick
customers to switch from NSI - akin to what some phone companies do to get new customers.
Many of these transfer scams involve a notice sent in the mail, fax, or e-mail. Some scammers may even
call by phone (as the contact information is available through WHOIS) to harvest more information.
These notices would include information publicly available from the WHOIS database to add to the look
of authenticity. The text would include legalese to confuse the end user into thinking that it is an official
binding document. If one receives such document, one should notify the resident "computer guy" or IT
support person.
Scam registrars go after domain names that are expiring soon or have recently expired. Expired domain
names do not have to go through the authentication process to be transferred, as the previous registrar
would have relinquished management rights of the domain name. Domain name expiry dates are readily
available via WHOIS.
See also
● Domain name registry
External links
● A list of ICANN accredited registrars.
Sources
● ICANN. "Registry Operator Maximum Price Schedule" Revised VeriSign .com Registry
Agreement: Appendix G. 16 April 2001. http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/registry-
agmt-appg-com-16apr01.htm
● Sloan, Paul. "Who's Your Go Daddy". CNNMoeny.com. Dec. 19, 2006. http://money.cnn.
com/2006/12/18/magazines/business2/godaddy.biz2/index.htm
Domain name drop list
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A domain name drop list is a list containing the expired domain names that will be deleted from the
domain name registry in the near future. are typically used by domainers to locate expiring domain
names with value.
Drop list contents

There is no defined date range for data contained with a drop list, as they can contain anywhere between
1 day's worth of expiring domain names, to 30 or more days worth. Some drop lists contain only domain
names that follow the domain name deletion process (where the domain name enters the REGISTRAR-
HOLD status, followed by REDEMPTIONPERIOD, and PENDINGDELETE), some contain only pre-
release domain names, and some contain both pre-release and regular domain names.
The data contained within a drop list can also vary, with some lists providing only basic information,
such as the domain name and its expiry date. Other drop lists provide more detailed statistics, including,
among others, PageRank, Link popularity, and Alexa rank.
Domain tasting
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Domain tasting, also known as domain kiting, is a practice of registrants using the five-day "grace
period" at the beginning of a domain registration for ICANN-regulated generic top-level domains to test
the marketability of a domain name. During this period, when a registration must be fully refunded by
the domain registry, a cost-benefit analysis is conducted by the registrant on the viability of deriving
income from advertisements being placed on the domain's web site.
Domains that are deemed "successes" and retained in registrant's portfolio often represent domains that
were previously used and have since expired, misspellings of other popular sites, or generic terms that
may receive type-in traffic. These domains are usually still active in search engines and other hyperlinks
and therefore derive enough traffic such that advertising revenue exceed the cost of the registration. The
registrant may also derive revenue from eventual sale of the domain, at a premium, to a third party.
Controversy
The practice is controversial as practitioners typically register many hundreds of thousands of domain
names under this practice, with these temporary registrations far exceeding the number of domain names
actually licensed.
In April 2006, out of 35 million registrations, only a little more than 2 million were permanent or
actually purchased. By February 2007, the CEO of GoDaddy reported that of 55.1 million domain
names registered, 51.5 million were canceled and refunded just before the 5 day grace period expired
and only 3.6 million domain names were actually kept. [1]
Some claim domain name registries such as VeriSign and the Public Interest Registry have turned a
blind eye to the practice as it has dramatically increased the number of registrations secured and
renewed. However, this claim is inconsistent with proposals by registries to introduce measures that
[1]
would reduce or eliminate the practice.
References
1. ^ Public Interest Registry proposal to reduce domain tasting
External links
● Domain Name Marketplace Workshop - Global policy forum held to discuss domain tasting
issues
● Domain tasting - ICANN Wiki on domain tasting, March 2006
● The Closing Window: A Historical Analysis of Domain Tasting - CircledID featured article on
domain tasting
● Entrepreneurs profit from internet domain loophole - CBC.ca article on domain tasting
Reverse domain hijacking
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The term reverse domain hijacking refers to the practice of inequitably unseating domain name
registrants by accusing them of violating weak or non-existent trademarks related to the domain name.
A widely regarded case of reverse domain hijacking occurred in 2000, when the Deutsche Welle
attempted to acquire the domain dw.com from software company Diamond Ware. This attempt was
reprimanded as reverse domain hijacking in 2001 by the WIPO [1].
Legal action
The defense and counterclaim of reverse domain name hijacking is valid in either administrative forums
or the courts of law.
Administrative Panel is WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization - Geneva)[2], NAF (The
National Arbitration Forum – Minneapolis, USA)[3], ADNDRC (Asian Domain Name Dispute
Resolution Centre – Beijing and Hong Kong, China)[4]
Former administrative forums are: CPR (CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution - Asia), until January 2007
[5], eResolution, until December 2001[6]
Courts of Law are any court of competent jurisdiction. (A court of competent jurisdiction is one that has
both subject matter and personal jurisdiction. Subject matter provides the particular court with the power
to hear the case and personal is court’s power over the people or entities involved in the case).
When asserting Reverse Domain Name Hijacking the domain registrant is requesting that the arbitration
panel make a finding that the challenger brought the complaint in bad faith pursuant to UDRP Rule 1
and Rule 15(e). In other words, a domain registrant can assert that the complainant is misusing the
arbitration proceeding in an attempt to “take” a domain or in an attempt to harass the domain registrant.
If the arbitration panel finds that a complainant used the dispute resolution policy in “a bad faith attempt
to deprive a registered domain name holder of a domain name,” there is a likelihood that the complaint
will fail. More and more “reverse domain name hijacking” judgments are being made.
The UDRP[7] decisions are instructive as to what is necessary in order to prevail on a “reverse domain
name hijacking” claim. Accordingly, the domain name registrant / respondent must show that
“complainant knew of respondent’s unassailable right to legitimate interest in the disputed domain name
or the clear lack of bad faith registration and use, and nevertheless brought the complaint in bad faith.”
Goldline International, Inc. v. Gold Line, Case No. D2000-1151 (WIPO, 4 January 2001)[8]; Syndney
Opera House Trust v. Trilynx Pty. Ltd., Case No. D2000-1224 (WIPO, 31 October 2000)[9]; Miller
Brewing Company v. Yunju Hong, Case No. FA 192732 (Nat. Arb. Forum 8 December 2003)[10]. In
other words, the domain registrant must prove that the complainant knew of the registrant’s legitimate
interests in or rights to the domain (ie. the domain consists of general, generic terms that others
commonly use) and was aware of registrant’s lack of bad faith registration and use of the domain name
(ie. the terms incorporated in the domain are descriptive or laudatory of the goods or services for which
it will be used).
Goldline case (2000)

For example, one early UDRP decision, Goldline International v. Gold Line [11], dealt with the domain
“goldline.com,” common terms used in everyday language which can be described as laudatory or even
descriptive when used in conjunction with a line of gold jewelry. In this case, the registrant / respondent
was an individual who operated under several businesses, including Gold Line Internet, specializing in
vanity toll-free numbers, domain name addresses, and the creation of intellectual property. The
complainant, Goldline International, Inc., was a business dealing in goods and services relating to coins
and precious metals. Gold Line Internet brought a “reverse domain name hijacking” claim against Gold
International in its response to the UDRP complaint. Gold Line pointed out to the panel, that although
Goldline International had registered trademarks, their rights were not superior to the other GOLDLINE
trademark holders. Furthermore, there were at least 47 trademark applications filed since 1958 for
“GOLD LINE” and “GOLDLINE” and Goldline International had not objected in any way to any of
these applications. The panel reviewed all criteria relating to the registrant’s bad faith and found no
evidence that respondent registered “goldline.com” to profit by selling or renting it to Goldline
International, that respondent selected the domain because it was laudatory, that respondent’s goods and
services were not in the same competitive market, nor was respondent trying to commercially trade on
Goldline International’s reputation by creating confusion in the minds of consumers (at that time there
were at least 10 other active “Goldline” businesses in California).
After determining that the domain name registrant had no bad faith intent, the panel reviewed the
“reverse domain name hijacking” claim. The panel found that “gold line” could have multiple legitimate
uses, [i] that complainant’s mark was limited to a narrow field, and that under a reasonable investigation,
complainant could have ascertained that respondent did not register the domain in bad faith.
Additionally, since respondent had expressly notified complainant of the facts, including the multiple
GOLD LINE users, and asserted Goldline International actions abusive if they pursued any further
action, the panel found that complainant had engaged in “reverse domain name hijacking.”
Civil action in a U.S. court

In the United States, the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) 15 U.S.C. 15 U.S.C. §
1114(2)(D)(v) [12]permits the domain name holder the exclusive remedy to bring a civil action when
their domain has been suspended, disabled, or transferred as a result of an ICANN proceeding, in order
to establish that their use of the domain is not unlawful. The court is authorized under the statute to grant
injunctive relief to the registrant, including reactivation or transfer of the domain to the registrant. Id. At
this time, a registrant will generally bring a declaratory judgment action, based on “reverse domain name
hijacking” 15 U.S.C. § 1114(2)(D)(v) [ii] seeking injunctive relief.
Pursuant to statute and described in Barcelona.com v. Excelentisimo Ayuntamiento De Bardelona, 330

F.3d 617, 626(4th Cir. 2003) [13], in order to establish a “reverse domain name hijacking” claim against
an “overreaching trademark owner,” the registrant must show the following:
1. that it is the domain name registrant;

2. that its registered domain was suspended, disabled, or transferred under the registrar’s policy as
described under 15 U.S.C. § 1114(2)(D)(ii)(II) (a reasonable policy by such registrar, registry, or
authority prohibiting the registration of a domain name that is identical to, confusingly similar to,
or dilutive of another's mark);
3. that the owner of the mark that prompted the domain to be suspended, disabled or transferred is
on notice, by service or otherwise, of the action; and
4. that the registrant’s / plaintiff’s use or registration of the domain is not unlawful pursuant to the
Lanham Act.
Other cases
● Majesty The Queen and New Zealand Govt Case
● Motorola Caught on a possible reverse domain hijacking
● Nissan Case
External links
● ICANN Uniform-Rules and Reverse Domain Hijacking
● Sample of Reverse Domain Dispute Cases
● Reverse Domain Hijacking Information
● Effects of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking
Domain name warehousing
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Domain name warehousing is the common practice of registrars obtaining control of domain names
with the intent to hold or “warehouse” names for their use and/or profit. Also see domain tasting, a
related business practice employed by registrants.
Typically this practice occurs after a domain name has expired and the previous owner (registrant) has
not exercised his/her right to renew that name within the allotted time frame (approximately 45 days
following expiration). Domain's expiration date and time are easily calculated based off the expiration
date in the whois and the redemption process.
According to GNSO Council Deletes Task Force Report (2003), a council organized under the
Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), three specific modes of warehousing
were identified:
1. The registrant allows the domain name to lapse, but registrar fails to delete the domain name
during the grace period, resulting in a paid renewal to the registry. The registrar subsequently
assumes registration of the domain name.
2. The registrant purchases the domain name through fraud and the registrar assumes registration of
the name to resell in order to minimize losses.
3. The registrar registers the domain in its own name outright.
When the phrase "Domain Warehousing" was coined in the late 1990s, ICANN registrars were two
dimensional entities that served registrants of domain names. The concern at that time was that a
registrar would register available domain names and then offer to re-sell those registrations at a "higher
than registration" price to potential registrants. By 2006 the name space had clearly matured and the line
between registrars, media companies such as AOL.com (who operate ICANN accredited registrars to
manage their name portfolios) and large scale commercial registrants (who operate ICANN accredited
registrars as security measures) had blurred. It has been hypothesized that by 2010 many large
corporations or commercial registrants of domain names will operate an ICANN accredited registrar as a
security measure to protect and manage valuable name; and trademark inventory.
The primary concern today when one speaks of Domain Warehousing is that a retail registrar, which has
historically focused on serving its individual and small business registrants will make the domain name
renewals process difficult, convoluted or price prohibitive in an effort to unseat exasperated registrants
and usurp their registration rights for a profit greater than the potential renewal fee they could earn.
An additional concern is that companies pooling scores of drop registrars for additional registry
connections will stand at the expiring domain spigot conducting domain tasting without paying, and then
warehouse those which meet traffic criteria while denying the broader community a fair opportunity to
compete for those expiring names.
As of this writing the governing body over domain name registration, ICANN, has yet to address those
potential inequities. Registrars are in a unique position to impact domain name pricing by introducing
competitive bidding or auctions for expired domain names. Circumstances are further impacted when
registrars opt not to market the domains in the near terms, thereby excluding the recycling of
warehoused names indefinitely.
External links
● ICANN's report: GNSO Council Deletes Task Force Report

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Home | Domain name system | Domaining | Website | License | Index

by Nicolae Sfetcu, and MultiMedia

How DNS works in theory

Parts of a domain name

Iterative and recursive queries:

Address resolution mechanism

A DNS recursor consults three nameservers to resolve the address

As originally envisaged, the process was as simple as:

Circular dependencies and glue records

Caching and time to live

In the real world

DNS resolving from program to OS-resolver to ISP-resolver to greater

Types of DNS records

● An A record or address record maps a hostname to a 32-bit IPv4 address.

RR (Resource Record) Fields

Internationalized domain names

Legal users of domains

The party whom a NIC invoices.

Truth in Domain Names Act

Home | Domain name system | Domaining | Website | License | Index

Home | Domain name system | Domaining | Website | License | Index

1. Online Information Businesses

2. Online Shop Businesses

3. Online Services Businesses

Way to Upload website and earn on click basis

Notes and references

Home | Domain name system | Domaining | Website | License | Index

Home | Domain name system | Domaining | Website | License | Index

Free content and software

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

● Domain name system

■ Country code top-level domain

■ Generic top-level domain

■ Sponsored top-level domain

■ List of Internet top-level domains

■ Proposed top-level domain

■ Pseudo top-level domain

■ Single-letter second-level domains

❍ Fully qualified domain name

❍ Internationalized domain name

❍ Domain name registry

■ Domain name registrar

■ Domain name drop list

■ Reverse domain hijacking

■ Domain name warehousing

❍ Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy

❍ List of most popular given names

Home | Domain name system | Domaining | Website | License | Index

GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.2, November 2002

Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS

7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS

If a section in the Document is Entitled "Acknowledgements", "Dedications", or "History", the

10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE

Free content and software

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License

The term domain name has multiple related meanings:

The generic top-level domain (gTLD) extensions are:

v•d•e Generic top-level domains [show]

See also: Country code top-level domains

The country code top-level domain (ccTLD) extensions are:

Country code top-level domains