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Home arrow All Articles arrow Web Hosting Articles arrow What Are Top-Level Domain Names?
What Are Top-Level Domain Names? Print E-mail
Top-level domain names or TLDs are the suffixes of Internet domain names. They consist of the letters, which are after the last dot of a name. For instance, with the domain name www.EzineArticles.com, the TLD is "com".

Basically, top-level domains are of three types. The first are the country code top-level domain names or ccTLDs. These are used by dependent territories or countries. They are usually made up of two letters such as .uk for the United Kingdom or .us for The United States.


The next type would be the generic top-level domains or gTLDs. These are used by a specific class or a specific organization. They are usually made up of three or more letters. A lot of gTLDs are available worldwide, however the .mil for military and the .gov for governmental could only be used by the respective authorities. These gTLDs are also classified to sTLDs or sponsored top-level domains like .coop and .aero; and uTLDs or unsponsored top-level domain names like .info and .pro.

The third type would be the infrastructure top-level domains or iTLDs.

There are also some TLDs that are no longer used are considered historical. One of which is .nato. This TLD was created by the NIC or National Informatics Center in the late 1980s to be used by NATO or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as they did not feel that were any existing TLDs at that time that was able to show their international organization status. After it was, however, the TLD .int was created by NIC, which could specifically be used by international organizations. NATO was then convinced to use nato.int as their TLD. The .nato TLD was eventually deleted in July 1996.

Some other TLDs which are no longer used are .zr for Zaire, .cz for Czechoslovakia and .oz for Australia.


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