Top Level Domains (TLDs)

There are a few Top Level Domains (TLDs) that most people are familiar with, which includes:

  • com - Typically Commercial Entities;
  • net - Typically Network Providers (eg: ISPs, RSPs)
  • org - Other Organisations and where the other TLDs are not appropriate;
  • gov - Government (specifically U.S. Government)
  • biz - Businesses
  • info - Informational sites

A TLD is basically any domain name that does NOT have a dot '.' within the name. Bearing this in mind, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the not-for-profit public-benefit corporation which oversees the internet naming and numbering systems, has recently released a significant number of new TLDs.

 

It should be noted that ICANN does not actually register any domain names, however, they do provide the root DNS servers for the internet and therefore controls which TLDs are visible to everyone.

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