What Do Domain Name Extensions Mean?

Domain name extension refers to the ending of a top level domain. Some of the most common ones are .com, .net, and .org. There are only a limited number of extensions and are predefined. You will have to select one for yourself from these three extensions.

The domain name extension signifies something that is why it is named so. Taking the example of .com, this extension is used for commercial sites despite of their country of origin. .net is also used for the same purpose but the original intention was the use of the network sites such as ISPs. Taking another extension, .edu is used for schools and other education related sites. Meanwhile for those sites that belong to the government of a country, they will use .gov as their extension. On the other hand, .org is used by organizations and it is not for profit companies.

Dot com domain names are a little expensive than other domains like Dot info domain names that costs less. .com, .net, and .org are the most commonly used domain names and are widely accepted throughout the world. Anyone can have an access to them in any country to register a domain with one of these extensions. The dot com domain name is preferred by almost all the internet users. As the users are increasing, the numbers of domain names are increasing too. There fore many other extensions are now available in order to full fill these needs.

A two character country code is used if a domain name belongs to a particular country. This is done by entering the two digits code for that country at the end of the name. For example, .jp belongs to Japan, .fr belongs to France, .co.uk is for the United Kingdom. To provide an added level of stability, these domain name extensions are controlled by the governments.

Some alternative domain name extensions have recently been approved by ICANN. They can be used by anyone and include .biz, .pro, .aero, .coop, .name, and .museum. Two of them namely .biz and .info became very popular among people. Some other domain name extensions including .travel, .mail, .xxx, .jobs, and .cat are under consideration.

You will have a choice of domain name extensions at the time of registering it. You could select any of these extensions that you wish depending on its availability. Some extensions are of restrictive use and hence you cannot use them. .edu and .gov are two of them.

Dot com has proved to be the most popular of all the extensions and most people wish to obtain it for their domain name, however, as most of them are trying to purchase it, it became difficult for some users to get a good domain name with this extension.

ICANN Auctioning New Top-Level Domains: Serving Public Interest or Its Own? (CircleID)

One of these updates is a paper by ICANN's "auction design consultant PowerAuctions LLC". The document makes a case for an auction to be held for the "resolution of contention among competing new gTLD applicants for identical or similar strings."

Top-level domains in Taiwan to support Chinese characters from 1Q09 (Digi Times)

The Chinese characters spelling Taiwan (.¥xÆW) will be available for use in top-level Internet domain names starting from the first quarter of 2009, according to the government-sponsored Taiwan Network Information Center (TWNIC).

White House Imposes New Security Mandate for Federal Agencies (Washington Post)

The Bush administration has ordered all federal agencies to adopt new measures to shore up the security of government Web sites, setting a January 2009 deadline for implementing the changes across all dot-gov domains. Agencies will be required to roll out domain name system security extensions (DNSSEC), a set of security add-ons for the domain name system. DNS is a fundamental piece of the ...

New gTLDs: Comments on the Unsigned "The Economic Case for Auctions" (CircleID)

When Kurt Prinz briefed the Generic Names Supporting Organization ( GNSO ) Council (and observers) in Los Angeles April 10th and 11th, the new generic Top-Level Domain ( gTLD ) process model flows transition through an "auction" state in two of the three paths where two or more applications existed for the same (or similar) strings.

The Bid for International Cyber Property Rights (TechNewsWorld.com)

Who would like to bid the highest amount for the exclusive global rights to the new domain suffix, .dubai, under ICANN's latest policy? Such a suffix will create a powerful domain root that will corner some 180 services underneath it, like go.dubai, hotel.dubai, job.dubai, cars.dubai or fly.dubai. Who would be the next global cyber-branding leader of this new millennium?