.com (commercial) is a generic top-level domain A generic top-level domain is one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use on the Internet (gTLD) used on the Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite . It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and's Domain Name System The Domain Name System is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet. It associates various information with the domain names assigned to each of the participants. Most importantly, it translates domain names meaningful to humans into the numerical (binary) identifiers associated with. It was one of the original top-level domains A top-level domain or domain name , is the last part of an Internet domain name, that is, the group of letters that follow the final dot of a fully qualified domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level domain is com (or COM, as domain names are not case-sensitive). Management of most top-level domains is delegated (TLDs, the other five being .edu edu is the sponsored top-level domain for educational institutions, primarily those in the United States. Although not officially mandated for much of the domain's existence, in practice it has been used primarily for U.S.-based four-year universities. Starting in 2001, it was officially restricted to accredited postsecondary institutions, .gov .gov, pronounced "dot-gov," is a sponsored top-level domain restricted for use by government entities in the United States. The .gov domain is administered by the General Services Administration , an independent agency of the United States federal government. The URL for registration services is http://www.dotgov.gov , .mil mil is the sponsored top-level domain for the United States Department of Defense and its subsidiary organizations. It was one of the first top-level domains, created in January 1985, .net net is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used on the Internet's Domain Name System. The net gTLD is currently operated by VeriSign. Registrations are processed via accredited registrars and internationalized domain names are also accepted (see details) and .org org is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used in the Internet's Domain Name System. In the typical style of most gTLDs, org is sometimes pronounced in word form as 'org', 'dot-org', or 'dot-oh-are-gee (O R G)' when spoken, although not all users of the TLD agree on this usage) established in January 1985, and has grown to be the largest TLD in use. It was originally administered by the United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense is the federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government relating directly to national security and the military. The organization and functions of the DOD are set forth in Title 10 of the United States Code. The DoD contracted its maintenance to SRI International SRI International, founded as Stanford Research Institute, is one of the world's largest contract research institutes. Based in the United States, the trustees of Stanford University established it in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic development in the region. It was later incorporated as an independent non-profit organization, which managed it as DDN-NIC (alternatively known as SRI-NIC or simply "the NIC" (Network Information Center A domain name registry, is a database of all domain names registered in a top-level domain. A registry operator, also called a Network Information Center , is the part of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet that keeps the database of domain names, and generates the zone files which convert domain names to IP addresses. Each NIC is an)^[1]) at the domain nic.ddn.mil. Beginning October 1, 1991 it was contracted to Government Systems Inc. (GSI), which sub-contracted it to Network Solutions Network Solutions, LLC is a technology company which was founded in 1979. The domain name registration business has become the most important division of the company. As of January 2009, Network Solutions managed more than 6.6 million domain names. Their size, founding status, and longevity have made them one of the most important corporations Inc. (NSI).^[2]

History

On January 1, 1993 the National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health. With an annual budget of about $6.02 billion (fiscal year 2008), NSF funds approximately 20 percent of all assumed responsibility for its maintenance, as .com was primarily being used for non-defense interests. The NSF contracted its maintenance to Network Solutions Network Solutions, LLC is a technology company which was founded in 1979. The domain name registration business has become the most important division of the company. As of January 2009, Network Solutions managed more than 6.6 million domain names. Their size, founding status, and longevity have made them one of the most important corporations. In 1995 the NSF authorized NSI to begin charging registrants (of .org and .net as well as .com) an annual fee, for the first-time since its inception. Initially it was US$50 per year, with US$35 going to NSI, and US$15 going to a government fund. New registrations had to pay for the first two years, making the new-domain registration fee US$100. In 1997 the United States Department of Commerce The United States Department of Commerce is the Cabinet department of the United States government concerned with promoting economic growth. It was originally created as the United States Department of Commerce and Labor on February 14, 1903. It was subsequently renamed to the Department of Commerce on March 4, 1913, and its bureaus and agencies assumed authority over it (along with the rest of the generic top level domains). It is currently operated by VeriSign VeriSign, Inc. is an American company based in Mountain View, California that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the generic top-level domains for .com and .net, one of the largest SS7 signaling networks in North America, and the RFID directory for EPCGlobal. VeriSign also, which had acquired Network Solutions. (VeriSign later spun off Network Solutions' non-registry functions into the current company which continues as a registrar.) In the English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and of the United States since the late 19th century, it has become the lingua franca in many parts of the world. It is used it is consistently pronounced as a word, dot-com, and has entered common parlance this way.

VeriSign reported that in mid-2008 around 77 million .com domains were registered.^[3]

Although .com domains were originally intended to designate commercial entities^[4] (others such as government agencies or educational institutions have different top-level domains assigned to them), there has been no restriction on who can register .com domains since the mid-1990s. With the commercialization and popularization of the Internet, the .com domain was opened to the public and quickly became the most common top-level domain for websites A website is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed with a common domain name or IP address in an Internet Protocol-based network. A web site is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via the Internet or a private local area network, email An electronic mail message consists of two components, the message header, and the message body, which is the email's content. The message header contains control information, including, minimally, an originator's email address and one or more recipient addresses. Usually additional information is added, such as a subject header field, and networking. Many companies that flourished in the period from 1997 to 2001 (the time known as the "dot-com bubble The "dot-com bubble" was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2001 (with a climax on March 10, 2000 with the NASDAQ peaking at 5132.52) during which stock markets in Western nations saw their value increase rapidly from growth in the new Internet sector and related fields") incorporated the .com suffix into company names; these became known as dot-coms or dot-com companies A dot-com company, or simply a dot-com , is a company that does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website that uses the popular top-level domain, ".com" (in turn derived from the word "commercial"). The introduction of .biz .biz is a generic top-level domain intended for domains to be used by businesses; the name is a phonetic spelling of the first syllable of "business." It was created to relieve some of the demand for the good domain names available in the .com top-level domain, and to provide an alternative to businesses whose preferred .com domain name in 2001, which is restricted to businesses, has had no impact on the popularity of com.

Although companies anywhere in the world can register .com domains, many countries have a second-level domain with a similar purpose under their own country code top-level domain (ccTLD A country code top-level domain is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country (a sovereign state or a dependent territory)). Such second-level domains are usually of the form .com.xx or .co.xx, where xx is the ccTLD. Australia (.com.au), Greece (.com.gr), Mexico (.com.mx), South Korea (.co.kr), India (.co.in), the People's Republic of China (.com.cn), Japan (.co.jp), and the United Kingdom (.co.uk) are all examples.

Many noncommercial sites, such as those of nonprofit organizations or governments (including the Moroccan Consulate in Bordeaux), use .com addresses.^{[citation needed]} Some consider this to be contrary to the domain's original purpose and might say that a .org org is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used in the Internet's Domain Name System. In the typical style of most gTLDs, org is sometimes pronounced in word form as 'org', 'dot-org', or 'dot-oh-are-gee (O R G)' when spoken, although not all users of the TLD agree on this usage, .gov .gov, pronounced "dot-gov," is a sponsored top-level domain restricted for use by government entities in the United States. The .gov domain is administered by the General Services Administration , an independent agency of the United States federal government. The URL for registration services is http://www.dotgov.gov , or other more specific TLD might be more appropriate for such sites^{[citation needed]}. However, many organizations prefer the recognizability of a .com domain to a less familiar one.^{[citation needed]} As well, the original purposes of many of the top level domains are often considered irrelevant without restrictions on registrations.^{[citation needed]}

Registrations are processed via registrars accredited by ICANN ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California, United States, ICANN is a non-profit corporation that was created on September 18, 1998 in order to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. government by other organizations, notably; internationalized domain names An internationalized domain name is an Internet domain name that contains one or more non-ASCII characters. Such domain names could contain letters with diacritics, as required by many non-English languages, or characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese or Hindi. However, the standard for domain names does not allow such are also accepted.

Transfer procedures

Domains can be transferred between registrars. Prior to October 2006, the procedure used by VeriSign was complex and unreliable - requiring a notary public to verify the identity of the registrant requesting a domain transfer. In October 2006, a new procedure, requiring the losing registrar to provide an authorization code on instruction from the registrant (also known as EPP code) was introduced by VeriSign to reduce the incidence of domain hijacking Many people confuse domain hijacking with the reregistration of an expired domain by a new party. One is a legal process and one is not. Domain hijacking is theft, while if a name owner does not renew a name he or she is no longer the owner and it is available for someone else to register.

List of oldest .com domains

The following are the 100 oldest still-existing registered .com domains ^{[5] [6]}:

Notes

1. ^ Dana D. Sitzler; Patricia G. Smith; April N. Marine (February 1992). "Building a Network Information Services Infrastructure". 3. ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc1302.txt. Retrieved on 2008-11-16.
2. ^ Richard Schmalgemeier (1991-09-25). "SRI-NIC services moving". http://mx1.merit.edu/mail.archives/mjts/1991-09/msg00009.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-16.
3. ^ VeriSign, Inc VeriSign, Inc. is an American company based in Mountain View, California that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the generic top-level domains for .com and .net, one of the largest SS7 signaling networks in North America, and the RFID directory for EPCGlobal. VeriSign also (September 2008). "The VeriSign Domain Report" (pdf). The Domain Name Industry Brief Volume 5 Issue 4. 2. http://www.verisign.com/static/044191.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-11-16.
4. ^ Jon Postel Jonathan Bruce Postel made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, particularly in the area of standards. He is principally known for being the Editor of the Request for Comment (RFC) document series, and for administering the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority until his death. The Internet Society's Postel Award is (March 1994). "RFC 1591 Domain Name System Structure and Delegation". 2. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1591. Retrieved on 2008-11-16.
5. ^ iWhois.com | 100 oldest .com domains
6. ^ Domains Counter - Domain Timeline since 1985 by VB.com

External links

• IANA .com whois information
• List of .com accredited registrars

Categories: Generic top-level domains | CENTR members | 1985 introductions

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