Generic top-level domain
A Generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) is an internet extension with three or more characters. It is one of the categories of the top level domain(TLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. There are 21 gTLDs in the root zone of the internet and they are categorized as:[1]
- generic (.com,.info, .net, .org) which can be used for general purposes;
- sponsored, (.aero, .asia, .cat, .coop, .edu, .gov, .int, .jobs, .mil, .mobi, .tel and .travel) which can only be used by entities engaged within the specific industry;
- generic restricted (.biz, .name, .pro) which can be use only for their specified purposes and
- infrastructure(.arpa) is exclusively used to support operationally-critical infrastructural identifier spaces and it is operated by IANA.
The gTLDs are managed and operated by their sponsor organizations and or registry operators that were approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
Background edit
In 1984, Jon Postel and Joyce Reynolds published RFC 920 which introduced the initial top level domain names (TLDs) describing their categories and general purposes. These include: .arpa, the current internet host during that time; .gov (government) .edu, (education) .com, (commercial) .mil (military) .org (organization) and the two-letter code (alpha-2) in the ISO-3166 list which represents the names of countries.[2] On January 1985, the initial gTLDs including .net were implemented in the root zone of the internet.[3] The original gTLDs were managed and administered by the Network Information Center (NIC), the first assigned registrar responsible in hosting and registering the domain names. NIC was operated by SRI International.[4]