top-level domain
<networking> The last and most significant component of an Internet fully
qualified domain name, the part after the last ".". For example, host
wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk is in top-level domain "uk" (for United Kingdom).
Every other country has its own top-level domain, including ".us" for the U.S.A.
Within the .us domain, there are subdomains for the fifty states, each generally
with a name identical to the state's postal abbreviation. These are rarely used
however. Within the .uk domain, there is a .ac.uk subdomain for academic sites
and a .co.uk domain for commercial ones. Other top-level domains may be divided
up in similar ways.
In the US and some other countries, the following top-level domains are used
much more widely than the country code:
.com - commercial bodies
.edu - educational institutions
.gov - U. S. government
.mil - U. S. armed services
.net - network operators
.org - other organisations
Since the rapid commercialisation of the Internet in the 1990s the ".com"
domain has become particularly heavily populated
with every company trying to register its company
name as a subdomain of .com, e.g. "netscape.com" so
as to make it easy for customers to guess or
remember the URL of the comany's home page.
United Nations entities use the domain names of the countries where they are
located. The UN headquarters facility in New York City, for example, is un.org.
Several new top-level domains are about to be added (Oct 1997):
.nom - individual people
.rec - recreational organisations
.firm - businesses such as law, accounting, engineering
.store - commercial retail companies
.ent - entertainment facilities and organisations
(1997-10-08)
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top-level domain
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