Business Glossary

the last part of a web or e-mail address, such as .com, .uk, or the like.

Top-level domains are administered by registrars ultimately licensed by ICANN (see ICANN ). Some TLDs are administered by only one registrar, and some, such as .com, are shared by many.

There are three basic types of TLDs. First, the original set, dating from the early days of the Internet:

These are used mostly in the United States, although, except for .mil, they can be assigned anywhere. Other early TLDs, such as .uucp and .bitnet, stood for connections to other networks, and are no longer used.

At the end of the 1990s, several registrars began using .com, .net, and .org indiscriminately for all types of sites. In 2000, ICANN authorized an additional set of international TLDs, as follows:

Mean while, an official set of country code TLDs (ccTLDs) was adopted and maintained. For a complete listing of the ccTLDs, see the tables on pages 585 to 587. Note that the code for the United States, .us, is seldom used.

Most of these ccTLDs are used only in the country to which they belong, but some, such as .tv and .ws, have been resold for use elsewhere - a source of income for small countries, and confusion for everyone else.