A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. 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 it represents an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, a server computer hosting a website, or the web site itself or any other service communicated via the Internet. In 2017, 330.6 million domain names had been registered.
A domain name registry is a database of all domain names and the associated registrant information in the top level domains of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet that enables third party entities to request administrative control of a domain name. Most registries operate on the top-level and second-level of the DNS.
The domain name com is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Added in 1985, its name is derived from the word commercial, indicating its original intended purpose for domains registered by commercial organizations. Later, the domain opened for general purposes.
An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label that is displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in a language-specific script or alphabet, such as Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Hebrew or the Latin alphabet-based characters with diacritics or ligatures, such as French. 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.
.uk is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United Kingdom. It was first registered in July 1985, seven months after the original generic top-level domains such as .com and the first country code after .us.
.au is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Australia. It was first created on 5 March 1986. Domain name policy is managed by .au Domain Administration (auDA). As of July 2018, the registry is operated by Afilias.
The Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) is a flexible protocol designed for allocating objects within registries over the Internet. The motivation for the creation of EPP was to create a robust and flexible protocol that could provide communication between domain name registries and domain name registrars. These transactions are required whenever a domain name is registered or renewed, thereby also preventing domain hijacking. Prior to its introduction, registries had no uniform approach, and many different proprietary interfaces existed. While its use for domain names was the initial driver, the protocol is designed to be usable for any kind of ordering and fulfilment system.
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.
.il is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of Israel. It is administered by the Israel Internet Association and managed by NIC - ISRAEL, which hosts the DNS root server and manages the Israeli Internet Exchange, that supports IPv4 and IPv6.
The Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .io is nominally assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory. The domain is operated commercially by Afilias, a domain name registry subsidiary of Ethos Capital.
.nf is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Norfolk Island. While there is no rule requiring a local presence to register domains in this TLD, the pricing is significantly higher than most other domains, which has discouraged its use. Although registrations at the second level are the most expensive, they are still more common than third-level registrations, and most names in use are for sites relating to Norfolk Island.
.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.
.ly is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Libya. .ly is also the file name extension of the LilyPond format.
.na is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Namibia corresponding to the two letter code from the ISO-3166 standard.
.ni is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Nicaragua.
.rs is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Serbia. The domain name registry that operates it is the Serbian National Internet Domain Registry (RNIDS). The letters rs stand for Republika Srbija/Република Србија.
The Domain Name System of the Internet consists of a set of top-level domains which constitute the root domain of the hierarchical name space and database. In the growth of the Internet, it became desirable to expand the initial set of six generic top-level domains in 1984. As a result, new top-level domain names have been proposed for implementation by ICANN. Such proposals included a variety of models ranging from adoption of policies for unrestricted gTLDs that could be registered by anyone for any purpose, to chartered gTLDs for specialized uses by specialized organizations. In October 2000, ICANN published a list of proposals for top-level domain strings it had received.
The domain name .рф is the Cyrillic country code top-level domain for the Russian Federation, in the Domain Name System of the Internet. In the Domain Name System it has the ASCII DNS name xn--p1ai. The domain accepts only Cyrillic subdomain applications, and is the first Cyrillic implementation of the Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) system. The domain became operational on 13 May 2010. As of 2014 it is the most used internationalized country code top-level domain, with around 900,000 domain names.
CentralNic Group PLC is a British multinational internet services holding company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Its subsidiaries provide domain name registry and registrar services, in addition to associated products and services, including web hosting, brand management, and domain parking.
.wiki is a top-level domain name. It was proposed in ICANN's New generic top-level domain (gTLD) Program, and became available to the general public on May 26, 2014. Top Level Design is the domain name registry for the string.
