Hi, > Many Linkers are probably aware of this, but I happened to come across a list > of top-level domains and was amazed to find there must be hundreds - see > http://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt > > I know the <.sydney> TLD has been mentioned here before, but there's even > <.sex> & <.dad>!! Who carries the responsibility for administering these? I > naievely thought TLDs were only entrusted to authorities with national scope > and <.gifts> would be a second-level domain at least. > > The whole administrative structure seems to me to have been devalued. Why > not language-dependent TLDs, for example <.sex> and <.geschlechtsverkehr>?
There were a little over 300 of them, then in 2012 — following a multi-year community development process — applications were opened to all comers who wished to operate the registry for their own one. There were a complex set if requirements, but if you met them, you were able to apply. There were almost 2,000 applications, and many of them were successful and have now been created, bringing the tally to over 1,500 in total today. As to why there aren’t certain ones — either no-one applied for them or they were ineligible under the rules. For example, there are rules prohibiting them being country names (to avoid conflicts with existing country-code domains), and rules prohibiting them being too close to existing domains. Some really attractive ones were also ruled ineligible because it turned out they could introduce significant problems with deployed software. kim _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
