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gTLDs & ccTLDs

By the end of 2009 there was a base of more than 192 million domain name registrations across all of the Top Level Domains (Domain Industry Brief from VeriSign, Feb 2010).

The Different types of domain names

There are, of course, many different types of domain name. The main distinction is the kind of suffix used. In broad terms, domain names can be grouped as follows:

generic top-level domains (gTLDs), such as ‘.com’, ‘.net’ and ‘.org’.
country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs), such as ‘.de’ for Germany and ‘.fr’ for France.
sponsored top-level domains (sTLDs), such as ‘.mobi’, ‘.travel’ and ‘.asia’.

Each TLD is managed and run according to common technical standards, yet unique administrative processes. The record of which organisations are managed by which TLDs is administered by ICANN in what is known as the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) database.

When registering a domain name you need to decide which TLD you wish to use. If you choose a gTLD then you will typically be able to register what is known as a second-level domain name – for instance, ‘netnames.com’ where ‘netnames’ is registered directly under ‘.com’.

However, with ccTLDs things can be slightly less straightforward. Here it is common for registry operators (the organisations responsible for a TLD) only to allow third-level domain names. This is where another suffix is added with a dot before the TLD, for instance, ‘netnames.co.uk’.

Whether a name can be registered as a second-level domain name, a third-level domain name or as both is at the discretion of the registry operator or country responsible for managing that particular TLD. Some countries such as Germany only offer second-level domain names directly under the ‘.de’ suffix (‘netnames.de’). In the UK, on the other hand, it is not possible to register at the second level, the registry operator only offers third-level domains such as ‘.co.uk’, ‘.gov.uk’ and ‘.me.uk’.

It is important to note that these circumstances are constantly changing as the operators of TLDs open up domains at the second-level and introduce third level domains on a regular basis. For instance, the Spanish registry introducedthird-level domains ‘.com.es', ‘.nom.es’ and ‘.org.es’. Prior to this change, ‘.es’ was only obtainable within second-level domain names.

Internationalised domain names (IDNs)

Internationalised domain names, or IDNs, are domain names that use a different character set to that present in languages such as English. Domain names are now available in 39 character sets – supporting the users of around 350 different languages, from Korean to Russian.