.tel

Last updated

tel
Dot-tel logo.png
Introduced2005
TLD type Sponsored top-level domain
StatusApproved
Registry Telnames Limited
SponsorTelnames Limited
Intended useContact Details
Registration restrictionsNone
StructureDirect second-level registrations are permitted; single digits and single-numeric domains are restricted
Documents ICANN New sTLD RFP Application, Policies
Dispute policies UDRP, Sunrise dispute resolution procedure [1]
Registry website Telnames
Telnic logo Telnic Logo.png
Telnic logo

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. [2] 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. [3]

Contents

The domain's purpose is to provide a single name space for Internet communications services. Subdomain registrations serve as a single point of contact for individuals and businesses, providing a global contact directory service by hosting all types of contact information directly in the Domain Name System, without the need to build, host or manage a traditional web service. Additionally, as of July 2010, every .tel domain acts as an OpenID and an increasing number of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) clients can address a .tel domain name directly. [4] The TLD implementation also supports the hCard micro-format. [5]

Administration of domains

Telnic started publicly accepting applications for name registrations on 3 February 2009 after a closed Sunrise period for trademark holders. Information in .tel can be controlled by the owner through a website control panel that Telnic has created for registrars to provide to their customers, or through free clients for BlackBerry, Microsoft Outlook, iPhone, Android and some third party VoIP softphone clients. With the introduction of support for OAuth in July 2010, however, new third-party clients and services are available to tel registrants for publishing records to their domains securely, including the possibility of editing information offline via SMS gateways. [6] The control panel is an open source application, and can be changed or completely replaced by registrars, as the application programming interfaces required to manage tel information in the DNS were released by Telnic in October 2008.

When viewed over the Web, all tel domains point directly to a Telnic proxy webpage that is populated on the fly presenting the respective domain name owner's contact data stored within the DNS. tel domains can also be accessed without opening a browser on many devices through open source applications [7] or through direct DNS lookups.

Since 13 March 2017 additionally other name servers could be set for tel domains, which allows administration of domain name system records. Now tel domains behave like ordinary domains and could be used for web hosting and email.

Technical overview

In contrast to other top-level domains, .tel information is stored directly within the Domain Name System (DNS), within the actual domain name record, as opposed to the DNS simply returning details (such as IP addresses) of the machines on which information can be found. For example, users who register a .tel domain using Telnic name servers cannot create a type A Resource Record with the IP address of their own host. A user who wants to host a web site or run an own web server has to set own or providers' name servers.

As Telnic has enabled the DNS records to be encrypted using 1024-bit RSA with PKCS#1.5 padding [8] and stored in sub-folders which are hidden until paired with a public private key handshake with individuals, there is protection from spammers. As .tel also supports any type of contact information, concierge services like temporary email addresses, temporary telephone numbers and so on can all be utilized for additional protection of public information.

Reliability of data

The .tel TLD was released to trademark holders only until 3 February 2009, perhaps suggest that the resulting database of contact information can somehow be trusted as the official contact information of the rightful owner of those trademarks. However, after the short period of registrations restricted to trademark holders only (the Sunrise period [9] ), anyone willing to pay a premium price was allowed to buy any domain name (the Landrush period [10] ) regardless of who owned the trademark.

Furthermore, during General Availability, [11] anyone is able to register any name (assuming that it is available for registration) without paying a premium price.

The information held under the .tel domain is no more accurate or trustworthy than any other user defined data held in the DNS. It will be down to individual .tel owners to choose what they wish to store there.

As with all other gTLDs, trademark owners can utilize the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) to claim trademarked domains back.

Differences from domain .mobi

Since some of the services that are expected to use tel domains can be achieved on mobile telephones, there may be overlap with the intended use of the mobi domain, which was also approved by ICANN in the same round.

However, .tel is about publishing contact data: phone numbers, SIP addresses and so on directly in the DNS, not on HTML-based websites., [12] whereas the focus of the .mobi domain is providing web sites and other content formatted specifically for the user interface available on mobile phones and other mobile devices.

Alternative usage proposal

Pulver.com (operated by Jeff Pulver) also submitted an application [13] for the .tel TLD, but had a different intent. This proposal involved telephone number style numeric identifiers. Alternative viewpoints claimed that this either complemented or conflicted with telephone number mapping (ENUM). Purely numeric identifiers have now been approved for release by Telnic [14] and will be released later in 2011, with the restriction that single-digit .tel domains be withheld in order to avoid confusion with ENUM.

Related Research Articles

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the associated entities. Most prominently, it translates readily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for locating and identifying computer services and devices with the underlying network protocols. The Domain Name System has been an essential component of the functionality of the Internet since 1985.

<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.

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

<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. 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Root name server</span> Name server for the DNS root zone

A root name server is a name server for the root zone of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. It directly answers requests for records in the root zone and answers other requests by returning a list of the authoritative name servers for the appropriate top-level domain (TLD). The root name servers are a critical part of the Internet infrastructure because they are the first step in resolving human-readable host names into IP addresses that are used in communication between Internet hosts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.eu</span> Internet country-code top level domain for the European Union

.eu is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the European Union (EU). Launched on 7 December 2005, the domain is available for any person, company or organization based in the European Union. This was extended to the European Economic Area in 2014, after the regulation was incorporated into the EEA Agreement, and hence is also available for any person, company or organization based in Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The TLD is administered by EURid, a consortium originally consisting of the national ccTLD registry operators of Belgium, Sweden, and Italy, joined later by the national registry operator of the Czech Republic. Trademark owners were able to submit registrations through a sunrise period, in an effort to prevent cybersquatting. Full registration started on 7 April 2006.

The Internet uses the Domain Name System (DNS) to associate numeric computer IP addresses with human-readable names. The top level of the domain name hierarchy, the DNS root, contains the top-level domains that appear as the suffixes of all Internet domain names. The most widely used DNS root is administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In addition, several organizations operate alternative DNS roots, often referred to as alt roots. These alternative domain name systems operate their own root name servers and commonly administer their own specific name spaces consisting of custom top-level domains.

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

.info is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. The name is derived from information, although registration requirements do not prescribe any particular purpose.

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">.xxx</span> Sponsored top-level Internet domain

.xxx is a sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) intended as a voluntary option for pornographic sites on the Internet. The sponsoring organization is the International Foundation for Online Responsibility (IFFOR). The registry is operated by ICM Registry LLC. The ICANN Board voted to approve the sTLD on 18 March 2011. It went into operation on 15 April 2011.

The domain name arpa is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. It is used predominantly for the management of technical network infrastructure. Prominent among such functions are the subdomains in-addr.arpa and ip6.arpa, which provide namespaces for reverse DNS lookup of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, respectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DNS zone</span> Part of the Internets Domain Name System (DNS) organization system

A DNS zone is a specific portion of the DNS namespace in the Domain Name System (DNS), which a specific organization or administrator manages. A DNS zone is an administrative space allowing more granular control of the DNS components, such as authoritative nameserver. The DNS is broken up into different zones, distinctly managed areas in the DNS namespace. DNS zones are not necessarily physically separated from one another; however, a DNS zone can contain multiple subdomains, and multiple zones can exist on the same server.

DNS spoofing, also referred to as DNS cache poisoning, is a form of computer security hacking in which corrupt Domain Name System data is introduced into the DNS resolver's cache, causing the name server to return an incorrect result record, e.g. an IP address. This results in traffic being diverted to any computer that the attacker chooses.

A Name Authority Pointer (NAPTR) is a type of resource record in the Domain Name System of the Internet.

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.

DNS hijacking, DNS poisoning, or DNS redirection is the practice of subverting the resolution of Domain Name System (DNS) queries. This can be achieved by malware that overrides a computer's TCP/IP configuration to point at a rogue DNS server under the control of an attacker, or through modifying the behaviour of a trusted DNS server so that it does not comply with internet standards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.biz</span>

.biz is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It is intended for registration of domains to be used by businesses. The name is a phonetic spelling of the first syllable of business.

A landrush period is the time during which domain names are available for registration, usually to a closed group, to entities that do not own a trademark in the name they wish to register, for example generic terms like loan or car, and thus would not qualify for registration during the sunrise period. Orders may or may not be treated on a first-come-first-served basis. This period follows the sunrise period just after the launch of a new top-level domain or second-level domain during which, for example, owners of trademarks may register a domain name containing the owned mark, but a landrush period precedes a period of general availability, when any qualifying entity can register any name on a first come first-served basis.

Domain registration is the process of acquiring a domain name from a domain name registrar.

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

.wiki is a top-level domain name. Its purpose is to denote websites that are wikis. 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.

References

  1. ↑ "Telnic | FAQ". Telnic.org. Archived from the original on 6 January 2009. Retrieved 6 January 2009.
  2. ↑ "Telnic web site". Telnic.org. Archived from the original on 2 March 2001. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
  3. ↑ "Domain Count Statistics for TLDs". DomainTools. Archived from the original on 8 February 2014. Retrieved 9 October 2023.
  4. ↑ "voipGATE show off new .tel-powered apps at UCExpo « Telnic's Blog". Telnic.org. 11 March 2010. Archived from the original on 21 March 2012. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
  5. ↑ "Telnic increases .tel data portabilitywith hCard, OAuth and OpenID" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 April 2011. Retrieved 10 March 2011.
  6. ↑ "Editing published information". Twitter. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
  7. ↑ "Telnic | Software". Dev.telnic.org. Archived from the original on 4 March 2012. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
  8. ↑ "Protecting .tel Contact Data" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 July 2011. Retrieved 10 March 2011.
  9. ↑ "Sunrise". Archived from the original on 14 June 2009. Retrieved 12 February 2009.
  10. ↑ "Landrush". Archived from the original on 18 June 2009. Retrieved 12 February 2009.
  11. ↑ "General availability". Archived from the original on 3 September 2009. Retrieved 12 February 2009.
  12. ↑ K. Mahdavi (6 May 2006). "Telnic's response to Neil Edwards' comments" (PDF). Retrieved 6 January 2009.
  13. ↑ – New sTLD RFP Application .tel-Pulver Part B. Application Form
  14. ↑ "ICANN approves short and numeric-only .tel domain names" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 May 2011. Retrieved 10 March 2011.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.