If you’re following the news around new Top-Level Domains (TLDs), you’re probably hearing numerous terms that are being tossed around, and you may not know what they all mean. Here are some “need-to-know” terms that will help you throughout the decision-making process.
TLDs are the names at the top of the DNS naming hierarchy. They appear in domain names as the string of letters directly to the right of the DOT or “.”, such as “biz” in “www.example.biz”. With ICANN about to open the Internet past the traditional TLDs, organizations will be able to own the “property” directly to the right of the dot. The owner of the TLD controls what names (to the left of the dot) are recognized under the TLD. Commonly used TLDs include .biz, .org, .co,.us, .com, .net, .edu, .jp, .de, etc.
Brand TLD
During the new TLD application period that begins on January 12, 2012 and extends through April 12, 2012, companies or other established brands can create Brand TLDs, such as .Canon, .Hitachi or .Neustar.
Generic TLD
These are TLDs which typically consist of three or more characters, including .com, .org and .net. With the TLD expansion, organizations can create Generic TLDs for specific hobbies or other categories. These can include anything and everything from apples to zoo, for example, .food, .books or .pizza.
Community TLD
Community TLDs are operated for the benefit of a clearly delineated and defined community, where there is a straightforward membership definition. Groups that might qualify for a community TLD would include Chief Executive Officers, or the American Association of Retired Persons.
This is a system that was created to help users easily navigate through the Internet. All computers have a unique address called an Internet Protocol (IP) address, which is a long stream of numbers that can be difficult to remember. DNS allows users to type in a familiar string of letters called a domain name instead of dealing with a numerical IP address.
ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an internationally organized, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions. As a private-public partnership, ICANN is dedicated to preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting competition; to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and to developing policy appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.
Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)
IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet “a-z”. An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European “0-9″. The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed “ASCII characters” (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of “Unicode characters” that provides the basis for IDNs.
This is the entity, company or person that would like to apply for and use a domain name.
Registrars are organizations that provide domain name registration services directly to registrants. This can include services that assist registrants find, register, renew, and delete domain names. Registrars also send the information to the registry for entry into a centralized registry database of domains in that TLD, also known as WHOIS.
In order to prevent duplication of Web addresses, each TLD needs one authoritative place to register a domain name. For each TLD, this is its authoritative registry, which manages a centralized database of domain names. The registry organizes the information about domain names in TLD zone files that enable communication over the Internet. Without a registry to manage all this data, neither basic functions of the Internet, nor advanced activities like security and ecommerce can function. A registry provides direct service to registrars, who provide direct service to domain name registrants.
The above terms are a good starting place when trying to understand the verbiage of the industry and decide if a TLD is the right decision for your organization. For more terminology in this space, check out the ICANN glossary.
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