.name

Last updated
name
DotnameTLDlogo-vrsn.png
IntroducedAugust 17, 2001;22 years ago (2001-08-17)
TLD type Generic top-level domain
StatusActive
Registry Verisign
SponsorNone
Intended usePersonal sites of individuals
Actual useMostly used as intended.
Registration restrictionsNo prior restriction on registration, but registrations can be challenged if not by or on behalf of individual with name similar to that of domain, or fictional character in which registrant has rights
StructureOriginally registrations had to be at third level, in form john.smith.name, but later direct second-level registrations were allowed
Documents ICANN registry agreement
Dispute policies UDRP, Disputes
Registry website Verisign .name Registry

The domain name is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It is intended for use by individuals for representation of their personal name, nicknames, screen names, pseudonyms, or other types of identification labels.

Contents

History

The top-level domain was founded by Hakon Haugnes and Geir Rasmussen and initially delegated to Global Name Registry in 2001, and become fully operational in January 2002. Verisign was the outsourced operator for .name since the .name launch in 2002 and acquired Global Name Registry in 2008. [1]

In late September 2007, security researchers accused Global Name Registry of harboring hackers by charging fees per WHOIS lookup. [2] The policy of selling detailed registration info about domains in name for US$2 each was criticized as hindering community efforts to locate and clean up malware-spreading hosts, zombies, and botnet control servers located in name. [3] The registry offers unlimited lookups to approved users who sign a 10-page legal agreement. [4]

In November 2009, internationalized domain names (IDNs) became available for second- and third-level domain names. [5] IDNs are domain names that are represented by user applications in the native character set of a language.

Structure

When the TLD name was first launched, only third-level registrations and forwarded e-mail addresses were available. Second-level registrations became available in January 2004. The original intended structure of domain names was first.last.name, so that individuals could get a domain corresponding to their name. [6]

The purpose of this sharing of second-level names was to ensure that the highest number of people possible could get an email address that included their last name. This sharing did not impact any other people with the same last name, and research by Global Name Registry showed that a majority of the world's population does not have an overlapping firstname–lastname combination.

Usage

Subdomains of name may be registered at the second-level (john.name) and the third-level (john.doe.name). It is also possible to register an e-mail address of the form john@doe.name. Email forwarding will be operated by Verisign. The target address can be specified by an additional EPP mapping. [7] The second-level domain of third-level subdomains is shared, and may not be registered by individuals.

The WHOIS service for name is available at whois.nic.name. Domain name registrations are available from accredited ICANN registrars.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ICANN</span> American nonprofit organization that coordinates several Internet address databases

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a global multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization head-quartered in the United States responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces and numerical spaces of the Internet, ensuring the Internet's stable and secure operation. ICANN performs the actual technical maintenance work of the Central Internet Address pools and DNS root zone registries pursuant to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) function contract. The contract regarding the IANA stewardship functions between ICANN and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the United States Department of Commerce ended on October 1, 2016, formally transitioning the functions to the global multistakeholder community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Domain name</span> Identification string in the Internet

In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As of December 2023, 359.8 million domain names had been registered. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and for application-specific naming and addressing purposes. In general, a domain name identifies a network domain or an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, or a server computer.

The domain com is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. Created in the first group of Internet domains at the beginning of 1985, its name is derived from the word commercial, indicating its original intended purpose for subdomains registered by commercial organizations. Later, the domain opened for general purposes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.org</span> Generic top-level domain

The domain name .org is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) of the Domain Name System (DNS) used on the Internet. The name is truncated from 'organization'. It was one of the original domains established in 1985, and has been operated by the Public Interest Registry since 2003. The domain was originally "intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else." It is commonly used by non-profit organizations, open-source projects, and communities, but is an open domain that can be used by anyone. The number of registered domains in .org has increased from fewer than one million in the 1990s, to ten million in 2012, and held steady between ten and eleven million since then.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internationalized domain name</span> Type of Internet domain name

An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in non-Latin script or alphabet or in the Latin alphabet-based characters with diacritics or ligatures. These writing systems are encoded by computers in multibyte Unicode. Internationalized domain names are stored in the Domain Name System (DNS) as ASCII strings using Punycode transcription.

A domain name registrar is a company that manages the reservation of Internet domain names. A domain name registrar must be accredited by a generic top-level domain (gTLD) registry or a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry. A registrar operates in accordance with the guidelines of the designated domain name registries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.net</span> Generic top-level Internet domain

The domain name net is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used in the Domain Name System of the Internet. The name is derived from the word network, indicating it was originally intended for organizations involved in networking technologies, such as Internet service providers and other infrastructure companies. However, there are no official restrictions and the domain is now a general-purpose namespace. It is still popular with network operators and the advertising sector, and it is often treated as a better alternative to .com.

A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.ae</span> Country code top-level domain for the United Arab Emirates

.ae is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet for the United Arab Emirates. It is administered by .aeDA which is part of the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority of UAE (TDRA).

.ai is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Anguilla, a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean. It is administered by the government of Anguilla.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.tw</span> Internet country-code top-level domain for Taiwan

.tw is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Taiwan. The domain name is based on the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code TW. The registry is maintained by the Taiwan Network Information Center (TWNIC), a Taiwanese non-profit organization appointed by the National Communications Commission (NCC) and the Ministry of Transportation and Communication. Since 1 March 2001, TWNIC has stopped allowing itself to sign up new domain names directly, instead allowing new registration through its contracted reseller registrars. As of May 2023, there are 17 registrars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.gr</span> Internet country code top-level domain for Greece

.gr is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Greece. Registrations are processed via accredited registrars and domain names in Greek characters may also be registered.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.so</span> Internet country code top-level domain for Somalia

.so is the internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Somalia. After a long absence, the .so domain was officially relaunched on November 1, 2010, by .SO Registry, which is regulated by the nation's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. It was launched through various accredited registrars around the world.

Single-letter second-level domains are domains in which the second-level domain of the domain name consists of only one letter, such as x.com. In 1993, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) explicitly reserved all single-letter and single-digit second-level domains under the top-level domains com, net, and org, and grandfathered those that had already been assigned. In December 2005, ICANN considered auctioning these domain names.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.tel</span> Top-level domain

The domain name .tel is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. It was approved by ICANN as a sponsored top-level domain, and is operated by Telnic. Telnic announced in January 2011 that over 300,000 domains had been registered since the start of general availability on 24 March 2009. A substantial drop of mostly IDN .tel's occurred at the beginning of 2014. The total number of registered websites under .tel as of 9 October 2023 is approximately 43,227.

WHOIS is a query and response protocol that is used for querying databases that store an Internet resource's registered users or assignees. These resources include domain names, IP address blocks and autonomous systems, but it is also used for a wider range of other information. The protocol stores and delivers database content in a human-readable format. The current iteration of the WHOIS protocol was drafted by the Internet Society, and is documented in RFC 3912.

The domain name Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) is a new generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. Dot Chinese Website is among many listed top level domains. Created along with the partner domain name Dot Chinese Online (.在线) by TLD Registry through Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names (ICANN)’s new gTLD program launched in April 28, 2014. TLD Registry was founded in June 2008 in Finland with the mission to create essential new Chinese TLDs - intended mainly towards a Chinese-speaking audience. Because it is displayed in a simplified Chinese character language specific script, Dot Chinese Website is known as an Internationalized Domain Name (IDNs).

The Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) is a computer network communications protocol standardized by a working group at the Internet Engineering Task Force in 2015, after experimental developments and thorough discussions. It is a successor to the WHOIS protocol, used to look up relevant registration data from such Internet resources as domain names, IP addresses, and autonomous system numbers.

An emoji domain is a domain name with one or more emoji in it, for example 😉.tld.

References

  1. ↑ Arrington, Michael (3 October 2008). "Domain Name Consolidation: Verisign Acquires .Name Guys". Tech Crunch. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  2. ↑ Singel, Ryan. "Dot-Name Becomes Cybercrime Haven". Wired. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  3. ↑ Singel, Ryan. ".Name Registrar Defends Pay for Whois Policy". Wired. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  4. ↑ Extensive Whois access program agreement
  5. ↑ ".NAME IDNs Now Available & .SE Allowing Multiyear Registrations". hexonet.net. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  6. ↑ Reardon, Marguerite. "Registry remakes .name for itself". zdnet.com. ZDNet. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  7. ↑ ".name Registry Agreement Appendix 7, Functional Specification". ICANN . 1 December 2012.
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