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The TCP/IP Guide  9  TCP/IP Application Layer Protocols, Services and Applications (OSI Layers 5, 6 and 7)       9  Name Systems and TCP/IP Name Registration and Name Resolution            9  TCP/IP Name Systems: Host Tables and Domain Name System (DNS)                 9  TCP/IP Domain Name System (DNS)                      9  DNS Name Registration, Public Administration, Zones and Authorities

DNS Hierarchical Authority Structure and the Distributed Name Database 1 2 3 4 DNS Geopolitical (Country Code) Top Level Domains and Authorities

New Generic TLDs

There was, of course, no inherent reason why it was necessary to limit the generic domains to only that the few that were originally created. Over the years, many suggestions were made for new generic TLDs that would expand the number of possible second-level domain names and also provide better categorization for different organization types—that is, make the generic TLDs “less generic”. There was some resistance at first to adopting these new names, especially because there were so many different ideas about what new TLDs should be created. As I said before, creating TLDs must be done carefully to ensure that the name hierarchy makes sense.

IANA took input from a lot of people, and followed a complex procedure-that-I'd-rather-not-get-into-here J to determine what new TLDs should be made. In 2001 and 2002, approval was given for the creation of several new top-level domains, and decisions made about authorities for administering them.

Of the new TLDs approved in the last few years, the number that has achieved widespread popularity is, to my knowledge, zero. Humans are creatures of inertia, and most people are still used to names ending in .COM, .NET or .ORG. In time this may change, but it will probably take a few years.

Incidentally, there are some people who actually felt that adding new generic TLDs was a bad idea, since it makes organizations potentially more difficult to locate (due to the possibility of a name ending in a variety of different TLDs). This is debatable, however, especially since the exhaustion of address space in the existing TLDs means many companies have had to choose unintuitive domain names anyway.

DNS Hierarchical Authority Structure and the Distributed Name Database 1 2 3 4 DNS Geopolitical (Country Code) Top Level Domains and Authorities