Nicolae Sfetcu

^*=Foreign registration permitted

A

.ac – Ascension Island *
.ad – Andorra
.ae – United Arab Emirates
.af – Afghanistan
.ag – Antigua and Barbuda *
.ai – Anguilla
.al – Albania
.am – Armenia *
.an – Netherlands Antilles
.ao – Angola
.aq – Antarctica
.ar – Argentina
.as – American Samoa *
.at – Austria *
.au – Australia
.aw – Aruba
.ax – Aland Islands
.az – Azerbaijan

Unconventional ccTLD usage

Lenient registration restrictions on certain ccTLDs have resulted in domain names like I.am, tip.it, start.at and go.to. Other variations of ccTLD usage have been called domain hacks, where the Second-level domain and ccTLD are used together to form one word or one title. This has resulted in domains like blo.gs of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (gs), del.icio.us of United States of America (us), and cr.yp.to of Tonga (to). (Non country code TLDs have also been used, like inter.net which uses the .net gTLD, probably the first domain hack ever.)

ISO 3166-1 codes not used as ccTLDs

The codes EH and KP, although theoretically available as ccTLDs for Western Sahara and North Korea, have never been assigned and do not exist in DNS. Similarly, the code CS (Serbia and Montenegro) is not assigned an operator (cs was previously assigned to Czechoslovakia). TL (post-independence East Timor), is now being introduced to replace TP.

A domain name registry, also called Network Information Centre (NIC), is part of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet which converts domain names to IP addresses. It is an organisation that manages the registration of Domain names within the top-level domains for which it is responsible, controls the policies of domain name allocation, and technically operates its top-level domain.

Domain names are managed under a hierarchy headed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which manages the top of the DNS tree by administrating the data in the root nameservers.

IANA also operates the .int registry for intergovernmental organisations, the .arpa zone for protocol administration purposes, and other critical zones such as root-servers.net.

IANA delegates all other domain name authority to other domain name registries such as VeriSign.

Web services have been created that allow users to create short URLs which are easier to write down, remember or pass around. They are also more suitable for use where space is limited, for example in an IRC conversation, email signature, online forum or fixed width document (eg. email). A sample of current web services are provided below:

A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country or a dependent territory.

ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs. Creation and delegation of ccTLDs is performed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and with certain exceptions noted below corresponds to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes maintained by the United Nations.

An economic effect of the widespread usage of domain names has been the resale market (after-market) for generic domain names that has sprung up in the last decade. Certain domains, especially those related to business, gambling, pornography, and other commercially lucrative fields of digital world trade have become very much in demand to corporations and entrepreneurs due to their importance in attracting clients.

A victim website will usually send a cease and desist letter to the offender at first, in an attempt to quell the activity.

It may also try to purchase the website address from the typosquatter, which could have been the typosquatter's aim all along.

Occasionally, lawsuits will be taken against the offending site or individual.

A company may try and preempt typosquatting by obtaining a number of websites with common misspellings and redirect them to the main, correctly spelled website. For example www.gooogle.com, www.goolge.com, www.gogle.com www.gewgle.com, and others, all redirect to www.google.com.

Microsoft has released new software to help combat this issue. The software is called "Strider Typo-Patrol". This is a tool that scans and shows third-party domains that are allegedly typosquatting. It also lets parents restrict access to typo-squatting domains that show sexually oriented ads on typos of children's web sites.

An incorrectly entered URL could lead to a website operated by a cybersquatter.

Typosquatting, also called URL hijacking, is a form of cybersquatting which relies on mistakes such as typographical errors made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser. Should a user accidentally enter an incorrect website address, they may be led to an alternative website owned by a cybersquatter.

Generally, the victim site of typosquatting will be a frequently visited website. The typosquatter's URL will usually be one of four kinds, all similar to the victim site address:

(In the following, the intended website is "example.com")

A top-level domain (TLD) is the last part of an Internet domain name; that is, the letters which follow the final dot of any 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).

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), operated by by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), currently classifies top-level domains into the following types:

A domain hack is an unconventional domain name that combines domain labels, especially the top-level domain (TLD), to spell out the full "name" or title of the domain, making a kind of pun.

For example the second-level domain (SLD) blo.gs makes use of the TLD .gs (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands) to spell "blogs". The third-level domains del.icio.us and cr.yp.to make use of the SLDs icio.us and yp.to from the TLDs .us (United States) and .to (Tonga) to spell "delicious" and "crypto" respectively.

In this context, the "hack" represents a clever trick (as in programming), not an exploit or break-in (as in security).

Parked domain name for sale

A name generator is a program that uses language rules or word combining techniques to generate a list of names. Name generators are sometimes created with specific uses in mind ranging from marketing professionals who may use the generated names to brainstorm brandable product name ideas; through to people seeking an unusual baby or pet name.

Some hours ago I accessed and used ping.fm without problems. Some seconds ago my browser shows that "This web page is parked FREE, courtesy of GoDaddy.com".

Ping.fm is a free social networking and micro-blogging web service that enables users to post to multiple social networks simultaneously.

Someone knows what is happening now with this service?