.au Domain Administration
.au Domain Administration (auDA) is the policy authority and industry self-regulatory body for the .au domain, which is the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Australia. It was formed in 1999 to manage the .au ccTLD with the endorsement of the Australian Government and the authority of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). It is a not-for-profit membership organisation that promotes and protects the .au domain space for all Australians.


.au Domain Administration, History, Early history of .au
The operation of the .au ccTLD began in 1986 with the delegation of .au administration to Robert Elz of the University of Melbourne by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Elz devised the second-level domain (2LD) name structure, including .com.au, .net.au, .edu.au and .org.au, and introduced policies concerning eligibility for these domains. These policies included reserving the .com.au 2LD for registered commercial entities trading in Australia, and only being able to register a domain that closely aligned with a registrant's commercial name. Elz was responsible for the day-to-day operation of the .au ccTLD with all services provided free. By 1996, as businesses realised the commercial potential of the Internet, management of registrations became too great a job for Elz to accomplish by himself. Elz licensed the .com.au 2LD operation exclusively to Melbourne IT, the commercial arm of the University of Melbourne, for a term of five years.


.au Domain Administration, History, Early history of .au
Elz did not charge for domain services, but Melbourne IT ran domain registration on a for-profit basis, charging between $125–150 per year for registrations. Melbourne IT intended to remove the registration of pre-existing .com.au names whose owners had not paid registration fees by March 1997. This prompted ISP iiNet to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of .com.au domain holders. iiNet withdrew this action when Melbourne IT assured them it would not remove existing domains until at least October 1997, when competition in the .com.au administration was expected to exist.


.au Domain Administration, History, Early history of .au
However, disenchantment in the way the .au domain was run persisted, leading to demand for a single regulatory body to oversee the namespace.


.au Domain Administration, History, Birth of auDA
In recognition of the deteriorating state of .au, the Australian Internet community – primarily through several key industry associations and personalities – held a series of forums to work out a way forward. The result of this period of collaboration was the establishment in June 1997 of a new policy development body called Australian Domain Name Administration, or ADNA tasked with taking control of .au and operating the domain space for the public good.


.au Domain Administration, History, Birth of auDA
ADNA, however, was marked by internal conflicts. After two years of internal struggles, ADNA was renamed .au Domain Administration (auDA) and adopted a new constitution, procedures, and board. The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts set objectives for the new auDA board to reach in order for the new entity to gain endorsement as an industry self-regulatory body, endorsement achieved in December 2000.


.au Domain Administration, History, Preparing the new regime
The inaugural board of the new organisation was elected in April 1999, and began the task of trying to help mould a new framework of policies for the .au domain space. As part of the process, the organisation obtained a reassignment of management of the .au domain space from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which had absorbed the responsibility for global root domain administration from IANA. This was the first formal agreement ICANN ever signed with a ccTLD operator. With the endorsement of the Australian Government and ICANN, auDA became the recognised ccTLD body for the .au domain space.


.au Domain Administration, History, Preparing the new regime
auDA undertook reviews into .au domain policies. These reviews utilised experts from relevant fields to consider public and stakeholder submissions and feedback and devise policies. Key auDA panels that shaped the current .au landscape include the Name Policy Advisory Panel of 2000, and the Competition Model Advisory Panel of 2000. The latter concluded that the .au domain space should be as open as possible, with competition at both the domain name registry and the domain name registrar levels. The Name Policy Advisory Panel resulted in naming policy remaining mostly unchanged, with the exception of the .id.au sub-domain which was liberalised.


.au Domain Administration, History, Preparing the new regime
In 2001, as a result of the Competition Model Advisory Panel's report, the operation of five key .au registries – .com.au, .net.au, .org.au, .asn.au and .id.au was put to tender. The winning bidder(s) were to operate the registry for four years. One bid, encompassing all five registries, from AusRegistry won.


.au Domain Administration, History, Preparing the new regime
After 16 years of running the .AU registry, AusRegistry lost a competitive tender process to Afilias, who will take over the running of the .AU registry on 1 July 2018.


.au Domain Administration, History, Growth and Liberalisation
The new regime of competition and name policy began on 1 July 2002, with AusRegistry as the new domain name registry operator with 282,632 domain names under management. The new domain environment saw an increase in registrations, growing by over 3,000 domains in the first month of operations.


.au Domain Administration, History, Growth and Liberalisation
Further liberalisation of domain policies over the next few years, including the abolition of limits on the number of domains owned and removal of rules banning the registration of generic domains (such as flowers.com.au) saw the total domains under management grow to 710,428 by June 2006 – a growth of 252% in four years.


.au Domain Administration, History, Growth and Liberalisation
By January 2017, there were more than 3 million .au domains under the management of AusRegistry, with the .au domain space enjoying a trusted reputation among domains in Australia.


.au Domain Administration, Role
auDA is the policy authority and industry self-regulatory body for the .au domain space, charged with managing and maintaining a secure and stable domain name system. It achieves this through its main functions including: the development and implementation of domain name policy in the .au domain space, the licensing of 2LD registry operators, the accreditation and licensing of registrars and facilitating .au dispute resolutions.


.au Domain Administration, Role
Through its sponsorship agreement with ICANN, auDA represents .au at ICANN meetings and other international fora, and is also responsible for the management of the .au domain name system zone file. The zone file is a text file which contains a list of DNS servers for the second-level domains in the .au domain space and contains the IP addresses of DNS servers for .au and second-level domains, where those DNS servers themselves are within .au.


.au Domain Administration, Role
auDA also oversees and deploys new technologies and initiatives in the .au name space, which includes Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) auDA's own Information Security Standard (ISS). The ISS security standard was developed by a security group formed by auDA after a compromise on a registrars data systems. The ISS standard is based on ISO 27001. The Total Internet Group comprising ddns.com.au, cheaperdomains.com.au & ib.com.au are the first registrars to be accredited in 2013 a world first for the domain name industry .


.au Domain Administration, Domain Name Policies
Informed by the original domain eligibility criteria developed by Robert Elz, auDA has maintained a policy of requiring registrants to have either an exact match or a "close and substantial connection" to their desired domain name. This "policy rich" approach to the name space, begun by Elz and continued by auDA, has meant the .au domain space has avoided the cybersquatting and other illicit uses of domains prevalent in other more permissive domains.


.au Domain Administration, Domain Name Policies
In 2016, the auDA board announced its decision to introduce direct registrations in .au – for example "yourname.au" – after the submission of the final report of the 2015 Names Policy Panel. This follows on from the introduction of direct registration in the .uk and .nz domain spaces. Direct registration is due to be implemented in 2017.


.au Domain Administration, Disputes and Complaints
auDA is responsible for handling complaints and reducing fraud in domain name registration. This responsibility includes complaints regarding .au domain names, referred to as domain complaints and complaints concerning .au registrars and resellers, known as industry complaints. This responsibility does not extend to complaints about the content or use of websites which may be handled by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO), the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), a state or territory fair trading office, or the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, depending on the nature and content of the complaint.


.au Domain Administration, Disputes and Complaints
Domain complaints may relate to registrant eligibility – such as whether registrants meet the 'close and substantial connection' rule for domain eligibility – transfers, prohibited misspellings or other breaches of domain name licence terms and conditions. Industry complaints may relate to the management or services provided by an auDA accredited registrar, breaches of auDA codes of practice or other policies. In some cases, this has involved legal action.


.au Domain Administration, Membership and Organisational Structure
Membership is open to all stakeholders of the Australian domain system. Members are entitled to vote at General Meetings of auDA and to nominate and elect representatives to the board of directors.


.au Domain Administration, Membership and Organisational Structure
The board is ultimately responsible for directing the organisation, and is selected through a vote of its members in two distinct categories:


.au Domain Administration, Membership and Organisational Structure
These two groups each have half of the contestable board positions (four each), with up to three independent directors appointed by the elected directors. These independent directors must not otherwise be associated with auDA, the registry operator or any registrar. This breakdown is aimed at providing a broad balance of opinion to the board from different sectors of the local Internet and the wider community.


.au Domain Administration, Membership and Organisational Structure
The previous chairman is Stuart Benjamin, an independent board member with a background in regional development across Victoria. Mr Benjamin resigned as a director before a member vote to oust him.


.au Domain Administration, Membership and Organisational Structure
auDA's chief executive officer role is currently vacant, the previous CEO was Cameron Boardman, who joined auDA in August 2016. He has previously worked in the Victorian Department of Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources, and was chief architect of the Victorian Government's cybersecurity initiatives.


.au Domain Administration, Membership and Organisational Structure
The Australian Government is currently undertaking a review of Australia's .au domain management, to ensure it remains fit for purpose in serving the needs of Australians online. auDA has welcomed the government review.


.avi (album)
.avi is the second studio album of the Serbian experimental band Consecration. The album received a string of positive reviews from all over the Balkans region and Europe, which increased the band's popularity further.


.avi (album), Reception
Apart from the very positive reviews by other European reviewers, the album was critically very positively acclaimed by reviewers from Serbia, Croatia and other countries in the former Yugoslavia region. Nenad Milosavljević from Popboks gave 7/10 stars for this album with the comment that .avi "presents a release whose echo could very easily go overseas, over boundaries of the autistic miniature scene they belong to".


.avi (album), Reception
Slobodan Trifunović from Metal Sound gave the album ten out of ten stars, saying that the album "is one beautiful piece of music, well rounded work of experienced musicians and it will for sure go down in history as one of the best releases of harder music in Serbia". Croatian Cmar-net awarded the album with the rating of 9/10, praising the album as one of the most refreshing releases in past couple of years. Later on, Popboks announced that Consecration's .avi is the Serbian Album of The Year 2010, as voted by the jury.


.aw
.aw is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Aruba. It is administered by SETAR.


.aw, Second-level domains
Registrations are permitted directly at the second level, but there is also a .com.aw subdomain intended for commercial sites. Most of registrations are made via SETARNET's website.


.aw, Second-level domains
There has also been an increase in .pro.aw registrations intended for Aruban professionals.


.ax
.ax is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of the Åland Islands, Finland, introduced in 2006. Previously, most Åland websites were under the .aland.fi subdomain.


.ax, History
On February 17, 2006, the Finnish parliament approved a modification of the laws regulating Finnish domain names to include the .ax top-level domain. During a three-year period, the aland.fi subdomain was phased out while .ax was used in parallel; no new registrations under the aland.fi subdomain were to be accepted, and all owners of domains under the aland.fi subdomain would receive registrations for the corresponding .ax domain.


.ax, History
On March 17, 2006, Finnish president Tarja Halonen signed the bill into law, effective as of March 27, 2006. The government of Åland began accepting registrations immediately following the changing of the law.


.ax, History
On June 9, 2006, ICANN approved delegating the .ax top-level domain to the government of Åland. The .ax domain was added to the root zone on June 21, 2006, and became active on August 15, 2006. The code ax itself comes from the ISO 3166 standard, and was assigned to Åland in 2004. The letter X is not included in any major or locally used language, but other possible codes were already taken, e.g. .al by Albania, .ad by Andorra, and .an by what was at the time the Netherlands Antilles.


.ax, History
Since September 5, 2016, anyone worldwide is permitted to register domain names under the .ax TLD.


.az
.az is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Azerbaijan. It is administered by Azerbaijan Communications.


.az, Second-level domains
Some second-level domains under .az are com.az, net.az, int.az, gov.az, org.az, edu.az, info.az, pp.az, mil.az, name.az, pro.az, biz.az and co.az.


.ba
.ba is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is administered by the University Teleinformation Center.


.ba, Second-level domains
The procedure for registering domains within .ba is slightly more complicated than in other ccTLDs; the process is defined by laws and regulations of BiH institutions. For more information, please see Regulations regarding the registration of the BA domain. While international domains can be bought by anyone without any additional requests and documents, .BA domains can be registered by only entities that meet all requirements listed in the Regulations. While domain registration is free, a local presence is needed. Any company that has a registered name or registered trademark in Bosnia–Herzegovina can register an eponymous .BA domain (provided that the domain is not already taken), though some additional caveats apply.


.ba, Second-level domains
Privately-owned second-level domains are permitted, which for-profit companies use. But there are also standardised second level domains:


.ba, Second-level domains
The rules for the standardised second level domains are fairly well enforced.


.bangla
.বাংলা (romanized as .bangla) is a secondary Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Bangladesh. This domain is meant for web addresses in the Bengali language. বাংলা is transliterated to bangla, but the web addresses will end in বাংলা. It is administered by the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology.


.bangla
.bd is the primary Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Bangladesh.


.bangla
.বাংলা was introduced in 2011 but delegated to the Bangladesh Telecommunications Company in 2016, meaning that the process of defining sub domains could start.


.bangla
.বাংলা is available for registration for all since December 16, 2016.


.bar
.bar is an Internet domain that is specifically geared for bars, pubs and nightclubs, including bar and restaurant guides, critics, delivery services, wine and liquor, and related industries. It is a new gTLD owned by Mexico City-based company Punto 2012. The domain .bar was released on June 11, 2014 and its launch was considered to be part of a new phase of the Internet, where domain endings are more defined and better categorised.


.bar, Original purpose of .bar domain
According to ICANN, intended use was geographical name for the City of Bar, Montenegro (population at the time 42,000). In order to receive rights, Punto 2012 had to reach agreement with Montenegrin Municipality of Bar for the rights to exclusively exploit domain rights. Still, some organizations and companies from Bar, Montenegro use .bar domain instead of national .me.


.bar, History
The .bar launch was divided into three phases: Trademark Holder (Sunrise), Priority Pre-Registration (Landrush) and General Availability. Each phase has specific application requirements.


.bar, History, Trademark Holders Registration - Sunrise
From April 9, 2014, at 18:00 UTC to June 8, 2014, at 18:00 UTC, trademark holders could submit an application to register a .bar domain containing their owned mark, before it was available to the public.


.bar, History, Priority Pre-Registration - Landrush
From June 11, 2014, at 18:00 UTC to July 10, 2014, at 18:00 UTC, customers could purchase .bar domain names at a premium price.


.bar, History, General Availability
Beginning July 14, 2014, at 18:00 UTC, customers could register .bar domain names on a first-come, first-served basis. Bulk .bar registration is supported during General Availability. Multiple applications with different registrars are resolved on a first-come, first-served basis during this period.


.bar, Other information
.bar domain names can have up to 63 characters. .bar domains cannot be registered with special characters such as & and # in them.


.bar, Other information
The .bar extension supports Latin IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) characters.


.bb
.bb is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Barbados.


.bb
The .bb top-level domain has been maintained by several administrators since its creation, the first of which being the University of Puerto Rico.


.bb
In 1996, the Government of Barbados sought the relegation of .bb to the incumbent local exchange carrier, Cable & Wireless (BARTEL) Ltd.


.bb
A 2001 Memorandum of Understanding was then later signed between the Government of Barbados and both Cable & Wireless (Bartel) Ltd. and its sister company Cable & Wireless (BET) Ltd., to continue the administration of the ".bb" domains until the government selected alternate directives.


.bb
In November 2007, .bb was again relegated to the Telecoms Unit within the Government of Barbados.


.bb
The Government has indicated that the government's policy will be to maintain a semi-restricted domain. Legal issues regarding domains are to be handled by the Corporate Affairs and Intellectual Property Office (CAIPO) arm of the Government.


.bb
The fee for Barbados' main ccTLD and all of the second and third-level domains is BD$120 annually. This pricing is significantly higher than most other domains, which has discouraged its use. At present the .bb namespace does not allow for commercial licenses to entities without some connection to Barbados.


.bcn
.bcn is a generic top-level domain for the city of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.


.bcn
According to the Barcelona City Council, the .bcn domain is intended to maintain a relationship of "cooperation and sum of efforts" with the .cat domain, even though the proposal has already received the criticisms of the Generalitat de Catalunya and of several personalities from the cultural and technological world of Catalonia.


.bd
.bd is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Bangladesh. It is administered by the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology. Registrations are at the third level beneath several second-level labels, paralleling the oldest gTLDs; registration is open except in the gov and mil subdomains, which are limited to authorized entities in the Bangladesh government. There is online registration facility available for .bd domains right now.


.bd
.বাংলা ("bangla") is a second country code top-level domain that was granted for Bangladesh in 2011. This domain is meant for web addresses in the Bengali language. The process of assigning domain names for web sites began on 16 December 2016.


.be
.be is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Belgium. The domain became active in 1989 and was administrated by Pierre Verbaeten of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. In 2000, the control of the TLD was transferred to DNS Belgium. As of June 2013 there are 1,392,477 registered domains.


.be
It was announced in November 2005 that the initial registration of domains would be free until the beginning of 2006, though with some limits on the number any individual was allowed to register. This was remarkably popular, with some 17,000 registrations coming in on the first day of the promotion.


.be
Domain names are registered directly at second level. Some of Belgian's main academic institutions, such as the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Université libre de Bruxelles, use third-level names under ac.be, but other have abandoned its use (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Ghent University, Université catholique de Louvain, University of Liège, University of Namur, Saint-Louis University, Brussels). Most academic uses of the top-level .be domain are due to Belnet's policy allowing only one active .ac.be domain per institution. This is why ucl.ac.be shifted to uclouvain.be, fundp.ac.be to unamur.be, ulg.ac.be to uliege.be or fusl.ac.be to fusl.be. One exception is the University of Mons which by integrating the Faculté polytechnique de Mons, could change its domain from umh.ac.be to umons.ac.be.


.be
Any .be registration has to be ordered via a registered agent.


.be
The domain has also been in use as a logo for the federal government since 2003.


.be
YouTube also uses the domain hack youtu.be for their URL shortening service.


.be, Regional domains
The Flemish separatist party Vlaams Belang introduced a draft resolution in the Parliament of the region of Flanders demanding the creation of a Flemish top level domain .vl (for Vlaanderen, Flanders in Flemish). However, this resolution failed to receive support of the region's other parties. Only recognized UN member states are eligible for a two-letter domain extension. In October 2008, the Flemish government expressed its intention to obtain a three-letter domain code for Flanders, like .vla, .vln or .fla. In 2014, .vlaanderen and .brussels were added, also administered by DNSBelgium.


.berlin
.berlin (dotBERLIN) is an approved top level domain (TLD) for the Internet. It is a community-based sponsored top-level domain for Berliners. According to the dotBERLIN Organization, .berlin will allow all Berliners to register their domains under .berlin


.berlin
Along with TLDs such as .cat and .asia, .berlin and other new TLDs fall into the new category of GeoTLDs. The issue of new top level domains in general and .berlin in particular has been discussed at various ICANN-Meetings since 2005.


.berlin
A statement by proponents of the .berlin proposal reads thus:


.berlin
.berlin is the independent top-level domain of the community of Berliners (on) the Internet. The local addresses available with this are concise and create an identity for citizens, companies, and institutions. Those providing and looking for information, goods, and services can thus intuitively come together. The .berlin domains strengthen the feeling of community amongst Berliners, improve communication, and make interaction easier, thus providing a stimulus for innovation and development. Both for Berliners and for non-Berliners, places called Berlin become more attractive as a place to visit, as a commercial location and as a place to live.


.berlin
On October 31, 2013, dotBERLIN GmbH & Co. KG signed a registry agreement with ICANN for .berlin. berlin officially launched on March 18, 2014. Managing director of dotBERLIN is Dirk Krischenowski.


.bf
.bf is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Burkina Faso. It was introduced in 1993.


.bf
It is administered by DELGI. The registry site is the ARCE website.


.bf, Citations
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.bg
The domain name .bg is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet for Bulgaria. It is currently operated by Register. BG.


.bg
The domain name registration guideline impose the following restrictions: Domains can be registered by companies or citizens of the European Union, or foreign companies that have registered branches or commercial representatives in Bulgaria.


.bg
The price of domain registration is €30 per year (€36 including VAT).


.bg
Until mid-2006, the price was a one-time registration fee of US$50 plus US$50 per year (total of US$120 including VAT for the first year). For local standards this was a very high price, and many Bulgarian sites were registered under .com (esp -bg.com), .org, or .net domains, as the registration costs were significantly lower (US$8–12 per year) and less of a bureaucratic hassle.


.bg
From August 25, 2008, Register. BG simplified the procedures, allowing the registration of domain names in the .bg zone without providing documented grounds (trademarks, company names) for the name. Eventual disputes are to be solved via the newly established Arbitration committee.


.bg
Since September 18, 2006, Register.bg proposes new, third-level domains in the a.bg, b.bg, etc., subdomains (a Latin letter or a digit +.bg), lower cost (€12/year incl. VAT), with less restrictions and no dispute resolution. They are targeted mainly at private individuals.


.bg
The domain has been enabled with Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) since October 2007.


.bg
On September 5, 2009, Register.bg started accepting second- and third-level domain names in Cyrillic with letters found in the Bulgarian language only.


.bh
.bh is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Bahrain. It is administered by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Bahrain.


.bi
.bi is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Burundi. It is administered by the Burundi National Center of Information Technology.


.bi
The .bi domain was first delegated in October 1996. It was delegated to the entire country on July 16, 2002.


.bible
.bible is a delegated new top-level domain (TLD), approved by ICANN as a generic TLD (gTLD).


.bible, Usage
According to the ICANN application for this TLD, "The goal of the .BIBLE top-level domain is to establish itself as the recognized choice for registrants who want to market and promote themselves and their websites to, and reach, the Internet-using community, for ministry, business, personal or any other purpose, through a positive association with the Bible; and, as the recognized top level domain name for Internet consumers to know which people, businesses, information sources or other online resources associate themselves with the Bible."


.bible, Significance
Doug Birdsall, former president of the American Bible Society, described the domain as "the Bible's moment to move from Gutenberg to Google."


.biz
.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.


.biz, History
The biz TLD was created to relieve some of the demand for domain names in the com top-level domain, and to provide an alternative for businesses whose preferred domain name in com had already been registered by another party. There are no specific legal or geographic qualifications to register a biz domain name, except that it must be for "bona fide business or commercial use."


.biz, History
It was created in 2001 along with several other domains as the first batch of new gTLDs approved by ICANN in the expansion of the Domain Name System following the increased interest in internet commerce in the late 1990s. The TLD is administered by GoDaddy and registrations are processed via accredited registrars.


.biz, History
In contrast to other newly installed top-level domains, the biz registry did not implement a sunrise period to grant trademark owners first chance at registration, but instead used a procedure it called the "IP Claims Service" whereby trademark owners could file intellectual property claims in advance and then challenge any eventual registrant through a policy named Startup Trademark Opposition Policy (STOP). This process was created by Jeffrey J. Neuman as proof-of-concept protection service and an alternative to the Sunrise policy. A number of domains were successfully obtained by trademark owners from other registrants through this policy; some of the more controversial cases included those of paint.biz and Canadian.biz, the latter being reversed by a court decision.


.biz, Use
On June 23, 2008 at the ICANN 32nd International Public Meeting in Paris, the biz registry announced that it had officially surpassed two million registrations worldwide.


.biz, Use
In Turkish, biz means 'we' and is used in some sites such as turkleriz.biz (We are the Turks) and fenerliyiz.biz (We are fans of Fenerbahçe).


.biz, Alternative DNS roots
Before ICANN approved of the biz top-level domain in the official DNS root, similar domains of the same name were already in use by alternative DNS roots. This created the possibility of a biz domain pointing to different IP addresses depending on the specific DNS configuration of a client computer. For this reason, the domain's registry, GoDaddy, requires that a DNS server be officially registered with them on their list of approved DNS servers before a domain registrar may register it in the WHOIS database.


.bj
.bj is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Benin. It is administered by the Office of Stations and Telecommunications of Benin.


.bj
The “.bj” sub-domains are broken up into two separate categories: private domains (such as: .bj, .edu.bj, .gov.bj, .asso.bj, etc.) and sectoral fields (such as: .barreau.bj, .com.bj, etc. ).


.bj
Alphanumeric terms made up of letters of the French alphabet from A to Z, digits from 0 to 9, and hyphens are allowed in domain names. Domain names that are composed of a single character, are composed of two letters only, or begin or end with a hyphen cannot be registered.


.bl
.bl is an assigned Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) that was to be created for Saint Barthélemy, following the decision on 21 September 2007 by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency to allocate BL as the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code for Saint Barthélemy. This decision followed Saint Barthélemy's new status as an Overseas collectivity of France which took effect on 15 July 2007. Currently Saint Barthélemy uses Guadeloupe's ccTLD, .gp and France's ccTLD, .fr.


.blog
The domain name .blog is a generic top level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Added in 2016, it is intended to be used for blogs. Anyone can sign up for a dot blog domain name at the regular available prices. People can currently purchase .blog domains at a variety of domain registars. However, there are some restrictions regarding trademark names.


.blog, History
In late 2013, due to concerns over "name collisions", wherein companies could potentially be using some proposed gTLDs internally for their own use, the ICANN halted progression of .blog and 24 other proposed gTLDs pending further review.


.blog, History
In 2015, the rights to the .blog TLD were auctioned off to Automattic in for an estimated sum of 19 million USD. The TLD became active on 12 May, 2016.


.blog, History
In 2019, it was announced that Automattic will switch its backend registry provider for its .blog from Nominet to CentralNic with the goal to further advance .blog through tools and services available from CentralNic.


.bm
.bm is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Bermuda. It was originally delegated in March 1993 to Bermuda College and was redelegated to the Registrar General of Bermuda, the de facto manager of the .BM domain, in 2007.


.bn
.bn is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Brunei. It is administered by Imagine Brunei Berhad, or simply Imagine (formerly known as Jabatan Telekom Brunei & Telbru).


.bo
.bo is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Bolivia. On 08 June, 2009 the ISO 3166-1 code for Bolivia changed to reflect the BO used for the ccTLD.


.bo
It is administered by ADSIB. As of February 2011, the NIC was offering a registration fee of about US$40 per year or 280 $Bs for third-level domain and US$140 per year or 980 $Bs for second level domain. Registration is at the second or third level.


.bo
Brazilian TV Globo has also used this domain for shortener with the glo.bo URL.


.bond
.bond is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System of the internet. While first officially delegated to Bond University Limited on 23 March 2015, it is now owned by ShortDot SA. It was transferred to ShortDot SA on 20 September 2019.


.bond, Usage
The sponsor intends for the gTLD to be used by individuals and businesses in the finance industries.


.bond, Reference section
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.bq
.bq is designated—but not in use—as the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba (the Caribbean Netherlands) following the assignment on December 15, 2010, by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency of BQ as the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 to the area. This decision followed the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles and new status of the Caribbean Netherlands as public bodies of the Netherlands on October 10, 2010.


.bq
On 15 December 2010 the ISO 3166-1 code for Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba changed to reflect the BQ codified for the ccTLD.


.bq
Previously, the Caribbean Netherlands used the former Netherlands Antilles's ccTLD, .an, which has been phased out in July 2015. As part of the Netherlands proper, .nl also applies. Use of the top level domain is as of July 2015 being considered and an economic evaluation is being performed to that effect.


.br
.br is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Brazil. It was administered by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil) until 2005 when it started being administered by Brazilian Network Information Center (Núcleo de Informação e Coordenação do Ponto br). A local contact is required for any registration. Registrations of domain names with Portuguese characters are also accepted.


.br
With the exception of universities, the second-level domain is fixed and selected from a list that defines the category. For example, site.art.br is in the art (music, folklore etc.) category, and site.org.br is in the non-governmental organization category. Institutions of tertiary education were allowed to use the ccSLD .edu.br, although some use .com.br and others (mainly public universities) use .br. There are also some other few exceptions that were allowed to use the second level domain until the end of 2000. As of April 2010, most domain registrations ignore categories and register in the .com.br domain, which has over 90% of all registered domains. The .jus.br (Judiciary), and .b.br (banks) domains have mandatory DNSSEC use.


.br, History
Created and delegated to Brazil in 1989 by Jon Postel, initially the domain was operated manually by Registro.br and administered by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP). Originally, only researchers and institutions to which they belonged had the interest and ability to adopt the new system and register domains under .br.


.br, History
At the time, networks prevalent in the Brazilian academic setting were the BITNET ("Because It's Time NETwork"), the HEPnet ("High Energy Physics Network") and the UUCP ("Unix-to-Unix Copy Program"). As such, even before Brazil officially connected to the Internet in 1991, the .br domain was used to identify the machines participating in networks already in use by academics.


.br, History
In 1995 the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (Portuguese: Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil, or simply CGI.br) was created with an objective to coordinate the allocation of Internet addresses (IPs) and the registration of .br domain names. There were 851 domains registered with the Brazilian DNS by the beginning of 1996, thereafter experiencing rapid growth with the mass arrival of companies, Internet providers and media onto the Internet. The registration system was automated in 1997 and was developed using open source software.


.br, History
In 2005, CGI.br created his own executive arm, the Brazilian Network Information Center (Portuguese: Núcleo de Informação e Coordenação do Ponto BR, or simply NIC.br), which currently serves in both administrative and operational capacity for the registry.


.br, History
In 2017, accounts associated with DNS records of Brazilian banks were hacked. Kaspersky's researchers pointed out to a vulnerability in NIC.br's website and suggested its infrastructure had been compromised. NIC's director at the time, Frederico Neves, denied that NIC.br was "hacked", although NIC.br admitted the vulnerability.


.br, Domain registry
To register any domains under .br, it is necessary to enter into contact with Registro.br. Entities legally established in Brazil as a company ("pessoa jurídica") or a physical person ("profissional liberal" and "pessoas físicas") that has a contact within Brazil can register domains. Foreign companies that have a power-of-attorney legally established in Brazil can also do it by following .


.br, Domain registry
The registration of domains with special Portuguese characters (à, á, â, ã, é, ê, í, ó, ô, õ, ú, ü and ç) is accepted since 2005.


.br, Usage statistics
.br is the most common Portuguese language Web site suffix, surpassing all other Portuguese-speaking countries' TLDs as well as .com in popularity.


.br, Second-level domains, Direct registration
In 1991, it was decided that universities and research institutes would be allowed second-level .br domains directly. For example: Federal University of Rio de Janeiro got ufrj.br; University of São Paulo got usp.br; National Institute for Space Research got inpe.br; and so on.


.br, Second-level domains, Direct registration
In late 2000, the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) reported abuse in this system, and called for all institutions directly under .br to be moved to .edu.br – so, for example, ufrj.br would become ufrj.edu.br. During a meeting in early 2001, however, the Committee decided it would be of public interest to not move every second-level domain as to avoid confusion, but instead established rules regarding their registration:


.br, Second-level domains, Direct registration
As of August 2021, Registro.br reports 1207 domains registered directly under .br.


.br, Second-level domains, Predefined domains
As of August 2021, there are 140 different second-level domains of .br under which custom domains can be registered, and they are divided into six categories: "Generic", "Cities", "Universities", "Professionals", "Natural persons" and "Legal persons". They are the following:


.br, Second-level domains, Predefined domains, Special second-level domains
From 2000 until 2009, during election cycles, electoral candidates could register domains under CAN.br, with the format [name][number].can.br – where the name is the registered candidate name, and the number is the identification number for that candidate in the election (related to the party's identification number). The second-level domain was in a category of its own, called "natural persons, special".


.br, Second-level domains, Predefined domains, Special second-level domains
As an example, during the 2004 elections for mayor of Aracaju:


.br, Second-level domains, Predefined domains, Special second-level domains
Domains were free for registered candidates. Additionally, domains were automatically cancelled at the end of the first round if the candidate lost, and remaining ones were cancelled after the end of the second round.


.br, Second-level domains, Agencies
There are multiple agencies registered directly under .br, as second-level domains, that aren't higher education or research institutions. The following list might not be exhaustive:


.br, Second-level domains, Agencies
Most of these agencies are subsidiaries of CGI.br and, as such, they follow a similar corporate identity. The "logos" are combinations of the names of the agencies with the logo for .br, all of which are simply typed out with Brandon Schoech (Tepid Monkey)'s freeware font "Qhytsdakx":


.br, Second-level domains, Networks
There are multiple networks registered directly under .br, usually of academic nature. Again, this list may not be exhaustive:


.bs
.bs is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Bahamas. It is administered by the University of the Bahamas.


.bss
In computer programming, the block starting symbol (abbreviated to .bss or bss) is the portion of an object file, executable, or assembly language code that contains statically allocated variables that are declared but have not been assigned a value yet. It is often referred to as the "bss section" or "bss segment".


.bss
Typically only the length of the bss section, but no data, is stored in the object file. The program loader allocates memory for the bss section when it loads the program. By placing variables with no value in the .bss section, instead of the .data or .rodata section which require initial value data, the size of the object file is reduced.


.bss
On some platforms, some or all of the bss section is initialized to zeroes. Unix-like systems and Windows initialize the bss section to zero, allowing C and C++ statically allocated variables initialized to values represented with all bits zero to be put in the bss segment. Operating systems may use a technique called zero-fill-on-demand to efficiently implement the bss segment. In embedded software, the bss segment is mapped into memory that is initialized to zero by the C run-time system before main() is entered. Some C run-time systems may allow part of the bss segment not to be initialized; C variables must explicitly be placed into that portion of the bss segment.


.bss
On some computer architectures, the application binary interface also supports an sbss segment for "small data". Typically, these data items can be accessed using shorter instructions that may only be able to access a certain range of addresses. Architectures supporting thread-local storage might use a tbss section for uninitialized, static data marked as thread-local.


.bss, Origin
Historically, BSS (from Block Started by Symbol) is a pseudo-operation in UA-SAP (United Aircraft Symbolic Assembly Program), the assembler developed in the mid-1950s for the IBM 704 by Roy Nutt, Walter Ramshaw, and others at United Aircraft Corporation. The BSS keyword was later incorporated into FORTRAN Assembly Program (FAP) and Macro Assembly Program (MAP), IBM's standard assemblers for its 709 and 7090/94 computers. It defined a label (i.e. symbol) and reserved a block of uninitialized space for a given number of words. In this situation BSS served as a shorthand in place of individually reserving a number of separate smaller data locations. Some assemblers support a complementary or alternative directive BES, for Block Ended by Symbol, where the specified symbol corresponds to the end of the reserved block.


.bss, BSS in C
In C, statically allocated objects without an explicit initializer are initialized to zero (for arithmetic types) or a null pointer (for pointer types). Implementations of C typically represent zero values and null pointer values using a bit pattern consisting solely of zero-valued bits (though this is not required by the C standard).


.bss, BSS in C
Hence, the BSS segment typically includes all uninitialized objects (both variables and constants) declared at file scope (i.e., outside any function) as well as uninitialized static local variables (local variables declared with the static keyword); static local constants must be initialized at declaration, however, as they do not have a separate declaration, and thus are typically not in the BSS section, though they may be implicitly or explicitly initialized to zero. An implementation may also assign statically-allocated variables and constants initialized with a value consisting solely of zero-valued bits to the BSS section.


.bss, BSS in C
Peter van der Linden, a C programmer and author, says, "Some people like to remember it as 'Better Save Space.' Since the BSS segment only holds variables that don't have any value yet, it doesn't actually need to store the image of these variables. The size that BSS will require at runtime is recorded in the object file, but BSS (unlike the data segment) doesn't take up any actual space in the object file."


.bss, BSS in Fortran
In Fortran, common block variables are allocated in this segment. Some compilers may, for 64-bit instruction sets, limit offsets, in instructions that access this segment, to 32 bits, limiting its size to 2 GB or 4 GB. Also, note that Fortran does not require static data to be initialized to zero. On those systems where the bss segment is initialized to zero, putting common block variables and other static data into that segment guarantees that it will be zero, but for portability, programmers should not depend on that.


.bt
.bt is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Kingdom of Bhutan. It is administered by the Ministry of Information and Communication.


.bv
.bv is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) reserved for the uninhabited Norwegian dependent territory of Bouvet Island. The domain name registry and sponsor is Norid, but .bv is not open for registration. .bv was designated on 21 August 1997 and was placed under the .no registry Norid. Norwegian policy states that .no is sufficient for those institutions connected to Bouvet Island, and therefore the domain is not open to registration. It is Norwegian policy not to commercialize domain resources, so there are no plans to sell .bv. Should the domain later come into use, it will be under the regulation of the Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority and follow the same policy as .no.


.bv, History
Bouvet Island is an uninhabited volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean. It was claimed by Norway in 1927. The domain was allocated on 21 August 1997, at the same time .sj was allocated for Svalbard and Jan Mayen. The allocation occurred because the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigns ccTLDs to all entities with an ISO 3166 code, for which Bouvet Island is designated BV.


.bv, History
In June 2015, Norwegian computer scientist Håkon Wium Lie and the Socialist Left Party proposed using the .bv domain, along with .sj, as online free havens. The proposal aims at protecting both the Norwegian authorities and foreign dissidents from surveillance.


.bv, History
In March 2012, Norid began an initial collaboration with the Dutch domain registry SIDN, with the purpose of examining the possibility of utilizing the .bv domain on the Dutch market. BV is the most common form of limited company in the Netherlands, which could have made .bv a popular domain. The collaboration ended in June 2016, when The Ministry of Transport and Communications advised that dispensation from certain parts of the Norwegian Domain Regulations, which would have opened for the sale of the .bv domain, should not be granted.


.bv, Policy
Management of .bv lies with Trondheim-based Norid, which is also the domain name registry for .no and the unused .sj. Norid is a limited company owned by Uninett, which is owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. The legal right to manage the domains is twofold, based both on an agreement with the IANA and regulations via the Telecommunication Act which is supervised by the Lillesand-based Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority.


.bv, Policy
The policy for the use of .bv is regulated by the Regulation Concerning Domain Names Under Norwegian Country Code Top-level Domains, also known as the Domain Regulation. This regulation also regulates Norway's other two ccTLDs, .no and .sj. Should .bv eventually come into use, the same rules and procedures as those currently regarding .no would be used for .bv. The domain remains reserved for potential future use.


.bw
.bw is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Botswana. It is officially administered by the Botswana Communication Regulatory Authority since 2013, previously being administered by the University of Botswana.


.bw, Operations
Most current registrations are at the third level beneath second-level names such as co.bw and org.bw, but some second-level registrations also exist. The most visited .bw domain is google.co.bw by Google Inc. in Botswana.


.bw, Operations
Botswana Communication Regulatory Authority operates a WHOIS service for .bw domains and was previously operated by Botswana Telecommunications Corporation.


.by
.by is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Belarus. It is administered by the Operations and Analysis Centre under the President of the Republic of Belarus (Оперативно-аналитический центр при Президенте Республики Беларусь). The BY code originates from the ISO code for Byelorussia, the former name of the country. The ccTLD was created for Belarus on 10 May 1994.


.by, Eligibility
The Operations and Analysis Centre under the President of the Republic of Belarus allows for anyone (not only for those who resides in Belarus) to register a second level domain such as something.by. However, third-level domains .gov.by and .mil.by are reserved for government use only. The names chosen for second-level domains must not conflict with those already registered or with well-known brand names. The names also must have two or more Latin characters and they cannot either start or finish with a hyphen (-). Second-level names that might have words or phrases that are deemed to be vulgar or illegal can also be rejected by the Administrator of ccTLD BY.


.by, History
At the very beginning there was only one company in Belarus which carried out the registration of domains .by – Open Contact Ltd. In October 2006 two other Belarusian companies got the licence to provide technical protection of information, including its execution by cryptographic means, and comprising the usage of a digital signature. Those were Reliable Software Inc. and Business Network JV. The former one has started to receive inquiries and carry out domain registration since 27 March 2007. On 3 September 2007 the licence was granted also to Extmedia and on 29 June - to Active Technologies. At present each of the five companies carries out domain registration officially. Since 1994 the only Technical Administrator of the .by domain has been Open Contact Ltd.


.by, History
According to the results of the competition conducted in September 2010 by the Operations and Analysis Centre (OAC) - the authorised government body for the purposes of security of the Internet - the .by domain was redelegated to Reliable Software Inc. (hoster.by). On 7 February 2012 ICANN approved the candidacy of the company unequivocally.


.by, History
In 2007 while Open Contact Ltd. was the Technical Administrator of the .by domain it announced the reduction of price on national domains from 190,000 Belarusian rubles (US$88) to 130,000 ($60). This measure triggered the process of transmission of Belarusian web-sites from generic top-level domains to the national one.


.by, History
Since 2012, when Reliable Software Inc. (hoster.by) became the Technical Administrator of the .by domain, several changes have been adopted: the assessment of inquiries in the Operations and Analysis Centre (OAC) and a free 30-day reservation of a domain name have been eliminated and WHOIS-service has started to work.


.by, Fees
Since 2011 due to changes in currency exchange rate the price has decreased. The costs to use a .by domain is a US$12 fee for the first year and second payment of $12 to maintain the domain. The renewal of the domain occurs yearly. The maximum upfront payment is 1 years. The payment of the fees occur by bank transfer, WebMoney, credit card or cash depending on the registrar.


.by, Internationalized country code top-level domain
Belarus applied for the Cyrillic top-level domain .бел, intended to be used with subdomains in the same script, which was approved by the ICANN in 2015.


.by, Other uses
The .by code is used for domain hack by institutions from the German state of Bavaria (German: Bayern), such as , the Bavarian Tourism Agency. Since "by" means "town" or "city" in Norwegian, it's also used by some newspapers, such as  for an Oslo newspaper, and  for a Trondheim newspaper.


.bz
.bz is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Belize. It is administered by the University of Belize.


.bz
At one point, .bz domains were being marketed by an American company as standing for "business", and that company took legal action against ICANN in an attempt to block the .biz domain as "unfair competition". Currently, the registry is in Belize, but is still marketing the domain outside the country as "meaning business". Internationalized domains with a wide assortment of non-ASCII characters are also available.


.bz
Many websites in Italy use this domain, because of the abbreviation of Bolzano, the capital of the province of South Tyrol, and the fact that the official abbreviation of the province is BZ. Many websites use the Italian subdomain .bz.it. Servers for the Open Source game BZFlag often use names ending in .bz.


.bz
There are some second-level domains in use, however these are not required:


.bz
It also might have use for typosquatting for misspellings of .biz domains.


.bzh
.bzh is an approved Internet top level domain. It is a sponsored top-level domain intended to be a top level domain for Brittany and the Breton culture and languages. On 10 May 2013, ICANN approved the creation of this domain. On 27 February 2014, ICANN signed a Registry Agreement with the applicant.


.bzh, History
The idea of applying for a .bzh top level domain was first mentioned in 2004 by Christian Ménard, member of the French Parliament. The introduction of the top level .cat domain in 2006 revived the idea. An online petition, initiated by Mikael Bodlore-Penlaez via the Geobreizh.com website, mobilized public opinion and encouraged local authorities to state public support for this project. The Conseil Général d'Ille et Vilaine (14 April 2006), the Conseil Régional de Bretagne (14 June 2006), the Conseil Général du Finistère (15 June 2006) unanimously supported the idea of creation of a .bzh.


.bzh, History
In 2007, the Regional Council of Brittany initiated a feasibility study of the project. Under the direction of a steering committee involving various stakeholders, in 2008 this study resulted in the establishment of a formal structure to support the Breton application: www.bzh.


.bzh, History
The www.bzh association was responsible for establishing the application, gathering the necessary funds to ensure its submission and its promotion within the Breton community. The association in December 2008 was granted financial support from the Conseil Régional de Bretagne. The online petition received more than 21,000 signatures.


.bzh, History
In 2014, the top-level domain .bzh was approved and is now used by a variety of individuals, groups and businesses that are located in Brittany or have links to the region.


.ca
.ca is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Canada. The domain name registry that operates it is the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA).


.ca
Registrants can register domains at the second level (e.g., example.ca). Third-level registrations in one of the geographic third-level domains defined by the registry (e.g. example.ab.ca) were discontinued on October 12, 2010, but existing third-level domain names continue to be supported.


.ca, Canadian Presence Requirements
Registrants of .ca domains must meet the Canadian Presence Requirements as defined by the registry. Examples of valid entities include:


.ca, History
The domain name was originally allocated by Jon Postel, operator of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), to John Demco of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1987. The first .ca domain was registered by the University of Prince Edward Island in January 1988.


.ca, History
In 1997, at the Canadian annual Internet conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Canadian Internet community, with a view to liberalize registration procedures and substantially improve turnaround times, decided to undertake reform of the .ca Registry.


.ca, History
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is a non-profit Canadian corporation that is responsible for operating the .ca Internet country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) today. It assumed operation of the .ca ccTLD on December 1, 2000, from UBC. On April 15, 2008, CIRA registered its one millionth .ca Internet domain name.


.ca, History
Any .ca registration has to be ordered via a certified registrar.


.ca, Third-level (provincial) and fourth-level (municipal) domains
UBC's registry operations once favoured fourth-level names (such as city.toronto.on.ca) for purely local entities or third-level names for entities operating solely within one province. Nationally incorporated companies could have a .ca domain, while provincially incorporated companies required the letters of their province, like .mb.ca. Only an entity with presence in two or more provinces was typically registered directly under .ca; this complex structure (and the long delays in getting .ca registration) caused many Canadian entities to favour the .com, .org and .net registrations, despite the then-higher cost.


.ca, Third-level (provincial) and fourth-level (municipal) domains
Currently, any of the above listed parties can register a domain with a name of their choosing followed directly by .ca. CIRA stopped accepting new registrations for third-level domains on October 12, 2010,  citing complexity and the low number of new third domain registration as the reason for the change. As a result, the following domains at the third-level are no longer available for registration:


.ca, Third-level (provincial) and fourth-level (municipal) domains
The second-level domain name '.gc.ca' (Government of Canada) is commonly mistaken as one of the regional domains under which CIRA will allow Government of Canada registrations. gc.ca is actually a standard domain like all other .ca domain names. CIRA does not register domain names under .gc.ca directly.


.ca, Third-level (provincial) and fourth-level (municipal) domains
The .mil.ca second-level domain name is also a standard domain and is registered to the Department of National Defence (DND). The .mil.ca suffix is used internally by DND on its intranet, the Defence Information Network (DIN) or Defence Wide Area Network (DWAN), to distinguish intranet-only websites.


.ca, Naming restrictions
Internationalized domain names (IDN) were introduced in January 2013 with a limited selection of characters (é, ë, ê, è, â, à, æ, ô, œ, ù, û, ü, ç, î, ï, ÿ) to allow French language text with diacritics. Names which differ only in diacritical accents (such as metro.ca and métro.ca) must have the same owner and same registrar. Domain names that begin with the four characters xn-- are otherwise not available for registration. Length must be 2-63 characters, including the xn-- prefix encoding for internationalised domain names.


.ca, Naming restrictions
Names which match the name of an existing generic three-letter top level domain (such as .com.ca) or the Canadian top level country code (.ca) are reserved and therefore not available for new registrations. Certain expletives are not accepted as names. Municipal names of individual cities and localities within Canada are also reserved nationwide, along with village.ca, hamlet.ca, town.ca, city.ca, ville.ca and the names of Canadian provinces.


.ca, Naming restrictions
There are a handful of existing .ca registered names as short as two characters in length, but these tend to be rare as two-letter combinations matching any existing country-code TLDs were reserved in the past. Exceptions were typically names registered before the restriction was introduced, such as the Canadian Governor General at .


.ca, Naming restrictions
Names which exist at any of the levels (.ca, an individual province or territory, or an individual city) are blocked in their availability elsewhere in the .ca hierarchy. Registration, if it can be done at all, requires manual intervention by the prospective registrar as the permission of all existing registrant(s) must be obtained by CIRA. For instance, if the province of New Brunswick were to want to register "gouv.nb.ca", CIRA's normal automated WHOIS and registration tools would simply return the following error:


.ca, Naming restrictions
The domain name provided conflicts with at least one other registered domain name (e.g. xyz.ca conflicts with xyz.on.ca). Registering this domain name requires permission from the Registrant(s) that already holds the domain name(s): gouv.on.ca, gouv.pe.ca, gouv.qc.ca. Contact CIRA for more information.


.ca, Naming restrictions
Since Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec already use "gouv" on their provincial second-level domains for the French-language versions of their government websites, this domain is unavailable through the normal registration process. However, with the agreement of these three parties New Brunswick would indeed be able to register and use gouv.nb.ca.


.ca, Naming restrictions
Existing third-level domain registrants looking to obtain the corresponding second-level domain are normally advised to use the same initial registrar for both names.


.ca, Expired domains
After a thirty-day redemption period, intended to provide the original registrant one final chance to reclaim a suspended name, the expired names are assigned a to-be-released (TBR) status. These names are made available through a weekly auction process, in which lists of available names are posted online and advance bids are placed by prospective registrants through the various .ca registrars.


.ca, Expired domains
Domains which receive no bids are then released and made openly available for new registrations.


.cancerresearch
The top level domain .cancerresearch, is facilitated by the Australian Cancer Research Foundation. The focus of .cancerresearch is to bring together news, information and leading opinions on cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and cure.


.cancerresearch
On 15 May 2014, ICANN and Australian Cancer Research Foundation entered into a Registry Agreement under which Australian Cancer Research Foundation operates the .cancerresearch top-level domain.


.cat
.cat (pronounced in Catalan: punt cat [ˈpuŋ ˈkat]) is a sponsored top-level domain intended to be used to highlight the Catalan language. Its policy has been developed by ICANN and Fundació puntCAT. It was approved in September 2005.


.cat, History
Before .cat was available, and given the reluctance of certain Catalan institutions, companies, and people, to use .es, .ad, .fr, .it domains (depending on the state respectively) for their domains, alternatives emerged. An example of this was the website for the city of Girona in Catalonia, which preferred to use a .gi domain ("ajuntament.gi", the word "ajuntament" meaning both "city council" and "town hall"), even though .gi is the country code for Gibraltar, instead of the corresponding .es as a Spanish local authority.


.cat, History
To solve this matter, in September 2005 the .cat TLD was approved, designed to meet the wishes and needs of the Catalan linguistic and cultural community on the Internet. This community is made up of those who use Catalan for their online communications, and/or promote the different aspects of Catalan culture online and prefer it to any other domain. The initial registration period went from February 13, 2006, to April 21, 2006. The registry was open to everybody starting April 23, 2006.


.cat, History
In September 2017 a Spanish court ordered that all .cat domain names that were being used to promote the Catalan independence referendum shall be taken down. On September 20 the Spanish police raided the offices of puntCAT and arrested CTO Pep Masoliver for sedition. Following this, puntCAT released several tweets and a press statement on their website that condemned this action, calling it "shameful and degrading, unworthy of a civilized country [and] immensely disproportionate".


.cat, History
On October 31, 2017 several Catalan Government websites including president.cat, govern.cat and catalangovernment.eu were taken down due to the political crisis in Catalonia and due to the take over of authority by the Government of Spain.


.cat, Restrictions
The .cat domain is not territorial, but applies to the whole Catalan-speaking community, whether or not a site is based in Catalonia. In order to be granted a .cat domain, one needs to belong to the Catalan linguistic and cultural community on the Internet. A person, organization or company is considered to belong if they either:


.cat, Restrictions
Despite the restrictions, the domain has been exploited for feline-related domain hacks, such as nyan.cat. In September 2017, with the domain's filters weakened after the raid by Spanish police, American neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer was briefly hosted on a .cat address.


.cat, Impact
Following the success of the .cat domain, other language and culture-based domain names have emerged, such as .eus and .gal for the Basque language and culture (Basque Country (greater region)) and the Galician language and culture (Galicia), respectively, as well as the .bzh domain-name dedicated to the Breton language and culture in Brittany.


.cc
.cc is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an Australian territory. It is administered by a United States company, VeriSign, through a subsidiary company, eNIC, which promotes it for international registration as "the next .com". The .cc domain was originally assigned to eNIC in October 1997 by the IANA; eNIC manages the TLD alongside SamsDirect Internet.


.cc
The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus also uses the .cc domain, along with .nc.tr.


.cc, Usage
The .cc domain is preferred by many cricket and cycling clubs, as well as churches and Christian organizations, since "CC" can be an abbreviation for "Christian Church" or "Catholic Church". Some open-source/open-hardware projects, such as the Arduino project, use a .cc for their home pages, since "CC" is also the abbreviation for "Creative Commons", whose licenses are used in the projects. Business owners in Southern Massachusetts are rapidly adopting Cape Cod CC domains for local identity. Canadian Club whiskey has also used .cc domains for marketing purposes.. It is also used for some community colleges, though other domains, such as .edu, are more popular.


.cc, Second level domains, gov.cu.cc, com.cc, net.cc, edu.cc, org.cc
A number of second-level domain names are also maintained by CoCCA, including "com.cc", "net.cc", "edu.cc", and "org.cc".


.cc, Second level domains, cc.cc, co.cc, cu.cc, cz.cc
These are not official hierarchies of .cc, but domains owned by companies who offer free subdomain registration.


.cc, Second level domains, cc.cc, co.cc, cu.cc, cz.cc, co.cc
The co.cc URL has been known to host spammers, who create spam blogs, or "splogs", often with nonsense names. Due to such spamming, in July 2011 Google removed over 11 million .co.cc websites from its search results. Legitimate sites (per Google's Webmaster Guidelines) on the .co.cc subdomain could send a reconsideration request to Google to have their specific site excluded from the ban.


.cc, Second level domains, cc.cc, co.cc, cu.cc, cz.cc, co.cc
The abundance of cheap .co.cc domains had also been used by those who sold fake "anti-virus" programs.


.cc, Second level domains, cc.cc, co.cc, cu.cc, cz.cc, co.cc
From 2012 to 2014, the co.cc website and name servers were not online. There was no formal statement by the company, but they did stop accepting new registrations some time before they closed.


.cc, Second level domains, cc.cc, co.cc, cu.cc, cz.cc, co.cc
In 2018, co.cc was listed for sale for US$500,000.00. As of 2019, co.cc is registered to and in use by another entity.


.cd
.cd is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was created in 1997 as a replacement for the .zr (Zaire) ccTLD, which was phased out and eventually deleted in 2001.


.cd
Except for reserved names like .com.cd, .net.cd, .org.cd and others, any person in the world can register a .cd domain for a fee. The ccTLD is popular (and thus economically valuable) owing to it being an abbreviation for compact disc (other similar ccTLDs are .fm, .am, .tv, .dj, .mu, and .me). Such unconventional uses of TLDs in domain names are known as domain hacks.


.cda file
.cda is a common filename extension denoting a small (44 byte) stub file generated by Microsoft Windows for each audio track on a standard "Red Book" CD-DA format audio CD as defined by the Table of Contents (ToC) (within the lead-in's subcode). These files are shown in the directory for the CD being viewed in the format Track##.cda, where ## is the number of each individual track.


.cda file
The .cda files do not contain the actual PCM sound wave data, but instead tell where on the disc each track starts and stops. If the file is "copied" from the CD to a computer, it cannot be used on its own because it is only a shortcut to part of the disc. However, some audio editing and CD creation programs will, from the user's perspective, load .cda files as though they are actual audio data files, and allow the user to listen to them.


.cda file, Organization of a CDA file
The size of a CDA file being fixed, as well as its organization, there is always only one and only chunk, named "CDDA" (meaning Compact Disc for Digital Audio).


.cda file, Organization of a CDA file
The identifier created by Windows is used by the Windows 95 and Windows 98 CD drive (cdplayer.exe). This player cannot connect to FreeDB or CDDB. So that it can display the artist name and song title, you have to manually enter this information in the cdplayer.ini file (in the Windows installation directory), in a section named after that identifier. This identifier has no relation to the DiscId used by FreeDB or CDDB, it is a purely Microsoft creation, for the above use.


.cda file, Organization of a CDA file
The position and length of the tracks use frames as the unit. There are 75 frames per second. This is the smallest block of data that can be read from an audio CD, corresponding to a sector of the CD.


.cda file, Organization of a CDA file
All the information which requires several bytes is coded with the order-byte Intel (small endian).


.cern
.cern is a top-level domain for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). It was registered on 13 August 2014. On 20 October 2015 CERN moved its main Website to .


.cf
.cf is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Central African Republic. It is administered by the Central African Society of Telecommunications.


.cf
Dot CF, also known as the Dot CrossFire, is an initiative of the Societe Centrafricaine de Telecommunications (SOCATEL; headquartered in Bangui) in partnership with Freenom (previously known as Freedom Registry). The domain has been made available for registration free of charge on Freenom's website, regardless of whether the individual who registers the domain has any connection to the Central African Republic or not. Exceptions include "High Value" domain names, which include trademark domain names for most Fortune 500 companies and common dictionary terms. Potentially valuable domains which are fewer than 4 characters are also marked "High Value". The same applies to other domains offered via Freenom, such as .tk and .ml.


.cf
The .cf registry allows the creation of emoji domain names.


.cg
.cg is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Republic of the Congo. It is administered by ONPT Congo and Interpoint Switzerland. Citizens of the Republic of the Congo are entitled to one free domain registration, directly at the second level of .cg. Additional registrations, and registrations by foreigners, have a cost of €225/year as of 2016.


.ch
.ch is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Switzerland in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Made available in 1987, only two years after .com, it is administered by SWITCH Information Technology Services.


.ch
The domain ch, as with other ccTLDs, is based on the ISO 3166-2 code for Switzerland derived from Confoederatio Helvetica (Helvetic Confederation), the Latin name for the country, which was used because of its neutrality with regard to the four official languages of Switzerland.


.ch
Second-level domain names must be at least three letters long. Two-letter subdomain names are restricted to the Swiss cantons, as well as the domain ch.ch of the Federal Chancellery of Switzerland. The only exception has been the former domain of the Expo.02 which was held in Switzerland, www.expo.02.ch.


.ch
Registrations of internationalized domain names have been accepted since March 2004.


.ch, In the Chinese domain market
.ch has been of a rising interest to Chinese domain investors for several reasons. According to EuropeID.com, the domain .ch still has many valuable English keywords and short letter and number combinations left. A contributing factor may be because the majority of .ch registrations are in German, leaving many English words available. In addition, with 2 million domains under .ch being registered, most of the reserved domains have the European market in mind, allowing valuable domains for other languages such as Chinese keywords in the Latin script being registered at a normal price.


.ch, Domain hacks
The .ch domain is very popular in domain hacks, used to spell words and names that end in "ch": for example, Techcrunch's tcrn.ch. This phenomenon is not limited to English; to take another example, the domain scha.ch (Schach, German for "chess") has been registered.


.ch, .swiss
The Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) has begun registering .swiss domains as of 7 September 2015. This is meant to augment the traditional .ch TLD. Applicants must currently have a "registered place of business and a physical administrative base in Switzerland" to apply.


.ch (newspaper)
.ch (.ch; spoken: Punkt CH) was a Swiss German-language free daily newspaper, published in the tabloid format by Media Punkt AG in Zürich between 2007 and 2009.


.ch (newspaper), History
It was first published on 19 September 2007. The newspaper's name was derived from .ch, the Internet's country code top-level domain for Switzerland.


.ch (newspaper), History
With a claimed initial print run of 435,000, it was one of the largest daily newspapers in Switzerland, according to 2006 statistics. The newspaper was distributed directly to homes in Basel, Bern, Lucerne, St. Gallen and Zürich. It competed mainly with other free newspapers in Switzerland including 20 Minuten, heute and the News.


.ch (newspaper), History
It ceased publication, because of poor economic performance, with the last issue on 4 May 2009. All 69 employees of the newspaper were laid off.


.church
.church is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It comes from the common name church and is used by churches, congregations, ministries of religion, and entities who deal with them. The .church domain was entered into the DNS root on May 15, 2014.


.church
Binky Moon, LLC c/o Donuts (corporation) is the registry acting as the official technical administrator of the .church TLD. It is required by ICANN to sell names via registrars such as Godaddy, Network Solutions and Web.com. This gTLD was approved by ICANN on 06 Feb 2014.


.ci
.ci is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Côte d'Ivoire.


.ci, Domain names
In most situations, specific registrations are done using a second level domain name. Côte d'Ivoire also makes use of a special convention with an introductory name such as chu- instead of the second level domain name.


.ci, Secondary level domains
The following are the existing second level names. The registration services offer to add more if necessary.


.ck
.ck is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Cook Islands.


.ck, Usage of .co.ck
.co.ck has been used as a humorous domain suffix because of its similarity with the English profanity "cock":


.cl
.cl is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Chile. It was created in 1987 and is administered by the University of Chile. Registration of second-level domains under this TLD is open to anyone, as established by the current regulation for the operation of the Domain Name Registration .CL since December 2013,which eliminated the requirement for foreign registrants to have a local contact  with a RUN, the Chilean national identification number.


.cl
Registration of names including accented letters (á, é, í, ó, ú), ñ and ü was opened up in 2005.


.cl
Microsoft used it in a domain hack for its social networking service so.cl. Oracle Corporation uses the domain hack ora.cl as a URL shortening service.


.cl, IPv6 support
In the Hurricane Electric report from May 2012, it appears as IPv6 enabled domain and with nameservers in IPv6.


.cloud
.cloud is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) delegated by ICANN. It is managed by the Italian company Aruba PEC SpA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the same Aruba S.p.A., one of the largest distributors of Hostings and Providers in Europe.


.cloud
The back-end services are provided by ARI Registry Services. The proposed application succeeded and was delegated to the DNS root zone on 26 Jun 2015.


.club
.club, often stylized as .CLUB and sometimes dot-club, is a top-level domain (TLD). It was proposed in ICANN's new generic top-level domain (gTLD) program, and became available to the general public on May 7, 2014. .Club Domains, LLC is the domain name registry for the string.


.club, Acquisition and promotion
In June 2013, .Club Domains, LLC acquired the .club gTLD through a private auction after raising $7 million from 27 individual investors. Colin Campbell, the company's chief executive officer, declined to reveal the final auction price, citing confidentiality agreements. club was the first new gTLD acquired via private auction. Unsuccessful applicants competing for the gTLD were Donuts and the Merchant Law Group LLP.


.club, Success
According to The Domains, "Those now using a web address ending in .club include brands, celebrities, sports figures, innovative entrepreneurs and startups, associations, and clubs around the globe... tens of thousands of clubs, business and individuals are actively using a .club address for their web presence, from Rotary Clubs, to school clubs, to passionate bloggers." Prominent individuals using the extension include rapper 50 Cent, professional basketball player Tyler Johnson, and Indian cricket star Virat Kohli.


.cm
.cm is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Cameroon.


.cm
The official registrar for .cm domains is Netcom.cm, based in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon. Netcom.cm Sarl was founded in early 2008 as a partner of  (French: Agence Nationale des Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication, lit. 'National Agency for Information and Communication Technologies'), the information technology regulator for Cameroon. On October 15, 2008, NETCOM.cm Sarl  launched the registry service for .com.cm, .co.cm and .net.cm. The current version of .cm domains went live August 27, 2009.


.cm, History
In August 2006, it was reported that the .cm registry had set up a wildcard DNS record, so that all unregistered domains in this top-level domain go to a parking page with paid search links. This was likely intended to take advantage of typographical errors by users attempting to reach .com web sites.


.cm, History
Auctions of .cm domains have been as high as $81,000 in 2009 for what pitchmen have termed "prime real estate". However, some bloggers have noted that nothing of any real value was actually put up for auction, despite the price war. Namejet.com, the official auction site for the .CM domain registrar Netcom.cm, sold over $500,000 in .cm domain names the first day and over $2 million in the first week.


.cm, Reputation
In a report published in December 2009 by McAfee, "Mapping the Mal Web - The world's riskiest domain", .cm was reportedly the riskiest domain in the world, with 36.7% of the sites posing a security risk to PCs. It is widely assumed that malicious domain programmers rely on inadvertent misspellings of well-trafficked websites ending in ".com" to lure unsuspecting users to their domains.


.cm, Reputation
The .cm top-level domain is also used for domain name hacks by legitimate organizations, such as the CyanogenMod project, which used get.cm as an easily remembered URL shortener for distributing versions of its software, and The Hill, which uses hill.cm as a URL shortener when linking to its articles on social media.


.cn
.cn is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the People's Republic of China. Domain name administration in mainland China is managed through a branch of the Ministry of Industry and Information. The registry is maintained by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). Entities connected to Hong Kong and Macau use .hk and .mo respectively.


.cn, Second-level domains
Any individual may register for second-level domain names. However, the registry has created a set of predefined second-level domains for certain types of organizations and geographic locations. Registrations for such third-level domains were available before second-level domains became available in 2003, and registrants of third-level domains were given priority for names at the second level.


.cn, Second-level domains, Second-level domains of provinces
The two-letter abbreviations are the same as those found in GB/T 2260-2002.


.cn, Second-level domains, Internationalized domain names with Chinese characters
Internationalized domain names with Chinese characters may be registered at the second level under the .cn top-level domain.


.cn, Second-level domains, Internationalized domain names with Chinese characters
On 25 June 2010, ICANN approved the use of the internationalized country code top-level domains .中国 (China in simplified Chinese characters, DNS name xn--fiqs8s) and .中國 (China in traditional Chinese characters, DNS name xn--fiqz9s) by CNNIC. These two TLDs were added to the DNS in July 2010.


.cn, Second-level domains, Internationalized domain names with Chinese characters
CNNIC proposed around this time Chinese domain names in .公司 (".com" in Chinese) and .网络 (".net" in Chinese). However, these have not been recognized by ICANN yet and are only available via domestic domain name registrars.


.cn, Second-level domains, Internationalized domain names with Chinese characters
Around 15 other generic domain names with Chinese characters have later been registered. See List of Internet top-level domains#Chinese characters.


.co
.co is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to Colombia.


.co
It is administered by .CO Internet S.A.S. As of July 10, 2010, there were no registration restrictions on second-level .co domains; any individual or entity in the world can register a .co domain.


.co
.CO Internet S.A.S from Bogotá, Colombia, was appointed as the manager for the .co TLD through a public procurement process that took place in early 2009. .CO Internet received the re-delegation approval as the manager of the .co TLD by ICANN on December 9, 2009, and received formal confirmation of the request by the United States Department of Commerce on December 23, 2009.


.co, Second-level domain names
When they took over administration of the .CO domain, .CO Internet S.A.S. implemented new domain policies that were more flexible than the historic ones that had been administered by the University of the Andes. The new policies were adjusted to international best practices and defined in consultation with local and international communities. With the new policies, Colombia would be able to sell second-level domain names to the world, such as widgets.co, where previously only third-level domain names were available, such as widgets.com.co.


.co, Second-level domain names
To celebrate the launch of second-level domains, the registry auctioned the first single letter .CO domain name "e.CO" during Internet Week on June 10, 2010. A video of the auction can be seen here:  For a purchase price of $81,000, the winner of the auction was internet entrepreneur Lonnie Borck of B52 Media. Proceeds were donated to a charitable cause of the winner's choice.


.co, Second-level domain names
In addition to e.co, the other single letter .CO domain names that have been allocated include:


.co, Second-level domain names
As of June 2011, more than 1 million .CO domains had been registered by people in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. As of January 2014, that number has grown to over 1.6 million .CO domains registered.


.co, Second-level domain names
With respect to search engine optimization, Google confirmed that "it will rank .co domains appropriately if the content is globally targeted".


.co, Third-level domain registrations
The third-level domain registrations closely mirror the "traditional" IANA .com / .net / .org / .gov / .edu / .mil hierarchy, with the addition of a national equivalent of .name. Different from registrations directly under .co, which are used to signal globally relevant interests, third-level domains are used to signal locally relevant business, organizations, academic institutions, and government.


.co, History
IANA delegates ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes as country code top-level domains, and on December 24, 1991, the .co top-level domain was assigned to Colombia and delegated to the Universidad de los Andes.


.co, History
In 2001, the university began to consider the possibility of marketing the domain as an alternative to the generic top-level domains. The government of Colombia objected on the basis that the university, a private entity, did not have regulatory oversight of the TLD and the Minister of Communications, Angela Montoya Holguín, wrote to them requesting that they not continue. In turn the university wrote to ICANN, rejecting the government's objections and stating their intention to appoint a subcontractor to handle the commercialisation of the domain.


.co, History
At a meeting on December 11, 2001, Holguín asked the Consultative Chamber and Civil Service of the Council of State to consider three issues:


.co, History
In relation to these three issues, the meeting concluded that:


.co, History
In response to the Council of State meeting, the university wrote to ICANN on 12 February 2002 stating that it had abandoned plans to commercialise the domain, and that as it could "no longer bear the administrative and operational responsibilities" it wished to discontinue its responsibility for operating the domain.


.co, History
Finally, with the enactment of Law 1065 of 2006, the Ministry of Communications of Colombia initiated a public consultation process involving local and international participants, including members of the ICANN community, with the objective of defining the future of the .CO TLD. As a result of that process, through Resolution 001652 of 2008, the Ministry approved new policies that would govern the administration of the .CO TLD. A public procurement process began which resulted in the award of the administration contract to .CO Internet SAS. Finally, on February 7, 2010, the administration of the TLD was transitioned from the University of Andes to .CO Internet SAS, under the regulatory and policy supervision of the Ministry of Communications of Colombia.


.co, History
On July 20, 2010, second level .co domains became available to the rest of the world on a first-come, first-served basis. In 2014, .CO Internet S.A.S was acquired by Neustar for US$109 Million, and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Neustar. It is responsible for the promotion, administration, and technical operation of the .co TLD.


.co, Accredited registrars
Only accredited registrars are able to sell .co domain names directly; other registrars selling .co domain names are acting as resellers. The list of accredited registrars is available on the .CO Internet website, and as of October 2011 there are 20 accredited registrars. Some of the 20 registrars operate under multiple brands.


.co (second-level domain)
In a number of countries, .co (an abbreviation of commercial) is used as a second-level domain in the Domain Name System used to route internet traffic. Domain registrants register second-level domains of the form .co.xx, where xx is the country code top level domain (e.g., .co.uk in the U.K. and .co.jp in Japan).


.co (second-level domain)
Countries using .co as a second-level domain include: Barbados (.bb), Cook Islands (.ck), Costa Rica (.cr), India (.in), Indonesia (.id), Israel (.il), Japan (.jp), New Zealand (.nz), South Africa (.za), South Korea (.kr), Thailand (.th),  United Kingdom (.uk) and Venezuela (.ve).


.co (second-level domain)
.co is also a country top-level domain corresponding to Colombia. Its current manager, Neustar, markets it globally as an alternative to .com.


.college
.college is a generic-top-level domain (gTLD) used in the domain name system of the Internet. It was delegated to the Root Zone of the DNS on 10 April 2014, completing the successful application for the string. The .college back-end registry operations are provided by CentralNic. Unlike .edu, .college is open for registration to the general public.


.college, Background
.college is owned and operated by XYZ.COM LLC, located in Las Vegas and Santa Monica.


.college, Launch Periods
The .college trademark-exclusive sunrise phase began on March 17, 2015 and ran until April 17, 2015. Its landrush period, which was exclusively for educational institutions, opened on April 20, 2015 and ran until September 22nd, 2015. XYZ announced that it would waive the application fee and first year's registration fee for companies registered in the Trademark Clearinghouse, as well as Educational Institutions during the landrush period. It was launched into global General Availability on September 29, 2015.


.com
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.


.com
The domain was originally administered by the United States Department of Defense, but is today operated by Verisign, and remains under ultimate jurisdiction of U.S. law. Verisign Registrations in the .com domain are processed via registrars accredited by ICANN. The registry accepts internationalized domain names.


.com
The domain was one of the original top-level domains (TLDs) on the Internet when the Domain Name System was implemented in January 1985, the others being edu, gov, mil, net, org, and int. It has grown into the largest top-level domain, and has lent its name to an era in the late 1990s, the dot-com bubble, during which excessive speculation in Internet-related companies in a period of rapid growth in the use and adoption of the Internet led to a stock market bubble and crash.


.com, History
The domain .com was one of the first set of top-level domains when the Domain Name System was first implemented for use on the Internet on January 1, 1985. The domain was administered by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), however, the department contracted the domain maintenance to SRI International. SRI created DDN-NIC, also known as SRI-NIC, or simply the NIC (Network Information Center), then accessible online with the domain name nic.ddn.mil. Beginning October 1, 1991, an operations contract was awarded to Government Systems Inc. (GSI), which sub-contracted it to Network Solutions Inc. (NSI).


.com, History
On January 1, 1993, the National Science Foundation assumed responsibility of maintenance, as com was primarily being used for non-defense interests. The NSF contracted operation to Network Solutions (NSI). In 1995, the NSF authorized NSI to begin charging registrants an annual fee for the first time since the domain's inception. Initially, the fee was US$50 per year, with US$35 going to NSI, and US$15 going to a government fund. New registrations had to pay for the first two years, making the new-domain registration fee US$100. In 1997, the United States Department of Commerce assumed authority over all generic TLDs.


.com, History
It is currently operated by VeriSign, which had acquired Network Solutions. VeriSign later spun off Network Solutions' non-registry functions into a separate company that continues as a registrar. In the English language, the domain is often spelled with a leading period and commonly pronounced as dot-com, and has entered common parlance this way.


.com, History
Although com domains were initially intended to designate commercial entities, the domain has had no restrictions for eligible registrants since the mid-1990s. With the commercialization and popularization of the Internet, the domain was opened to the public and quickly became the most common top-level domain for websites, email, and networking. Many companies that flourished in the period from 1997 to 2001—the time known as the "dot-com bubble"—incorporated the label com into company names; these became known as dot-coms or dot-com companies. The introduction of biz in 2001, which is restricted to businesses, has had no impact on the popularity of com.


.com, History
Although companies anywhere in the world can register com domains, many countries have a second-level domain with a similar purpose under their own country code top-level domain (ccTLD), such as Australia (com.au), China (com.cn), Greece (com.gr), Israel (co.il), India (co.in), Indonesia (co.id), Japan (co.jp), Mexico (com.mx), Nepal (.com.np), South Korea (co.kr), Sri Lanka (com.lk), United Kingdom (co.uk), and Vietnam (.com.vn).


.com, History
Many non-commercial sites and networks use com names to benefit from the perceived recognizability of a com domain. However, the registration statistics show varying popularity over the years.


.com, History
In December 2011, VeriSign reported that approximately 100 million com domains were registered. According to the Domain Name Industry Brief published in March 2020, which publishes every quarter, com domain registration totaled 145.4 million. As of March 2009, VeriSign reported that 926 accredited registrars serve the domain.


.com, History
On November 29, 2012, the U.S. Department of Commerce approved the renewal of the com Registry Agreement between Verisign, Inc., and ICANN. Through this agreement, Verisign managed the com registry until November 30, 2018.


.com, List of oldest second-level domains
The following are the 100 oldest still-existing registered com domains.


.com for Murder
.com for Murder is a 2001 science fiction crime drama film written by Nico Mastorakis and Phill Marr and directed by Mastorakis, starring Nastassja Kinski, Nicollette Sheridan, Roger Daltrey, and Huey Lewis. After being screened at various film festivals, it was released direct-to-video on January 14, 2003.


.com for Murder, Plot
Ben (Daltrey) is a successful and rich architect, living in Los Angeles. Sondra (Kinski) is his beloved wife, who broke a leg while skiing. As Ben is leaving town for his work, Sondra accesses his intelligent house computer Hal, and discovers that Ben has been chatting on "American Love Online". Posing as him, she chats with one of his online friends, Lynn (Valentine), and they agree to meet that night. Hacker Werther (Dean) rudely joins the conversation and later shuts out Sondra, and starts chatting in Ben's name.


.com for Murder, Plot
Sondra is meanwhile joined by her sister Misty (Sheridan), who came to look after her. Later that night Werther kills Lynn in her house, showing an online live feed of the murder to Sondra and Misty. Werther is shown to be a psychopath who loves to quote from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe and calls his victims by the name Lotte (the object of the affections of Werther in that novel).


.com for Murder, Plot
Sondra and Misty call the police and eventually speak with FBI agent Matheson (Lewis). When they send him the file of the murder, it appears to be encrypted. On the advice of agent Matheson, Sondra and Misty invite a computer expert to decrypt the file. As the expert arrives at the door, Werther calls them, pretending to be the expert. Sondra and Misty thus send the real expert away, believing he is the killer. A short while later, Werther shows up at the house, keeping his disguise.