domains

[Cristatus]

Who decides on how a country's domain ends? and why do some of them have .co.xx

for example:

.co.us
.be
.co.jp
.fr
.co.uk
.nl
.co.in
.de

get the idea?

 

[Aves]

ICANN

 

[Cristatus]

but how come some of the have a .co in their thingies?

 

[Aves]

.co.uk is the country code for United Kingdom. The .co portion of the extension indicates the domain name is for commercial purposes (similar to a standard .com extension). It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.

.org.uk is the country code for United Kingdom. The .org portion of the extension indicates the domain name is for an organization. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.

.me.uk is the country code for United Kingdom. The .me portion of the extension indicates the domain name is for an individual. It is unrestricted and may be registered by anyone, from any country.


All UK domains don't have .co.uk tacked on the end. It depends on what the domain will be used for.

Edit: Here's a list of the rest:

UK TLDs - .uk Top-Level Domain Divisions


.co.uk Commercial
.org.uk Non-Commercial Organisations
.ltd.uk Limited Companies
.plc.uk Public Limited Companies
.ac.uk Academic
.gov.uk Government
.lea.sch.uk Schools
.mod.uk Ministry of Defence
.nhs.uk National Health Service
.net.uk Networks



It's pretty much the same deal for other countries. Here is some more info if you're interested.

 

[Cristatus]

my point was, why are some TLDs composed of two parts, wherease some others are composed of only the country code? i admint, there are things such as .ac.be for academic institutions, but why only .be, and not .co.be?

 

[Aves]

It's basically up to the country getting the ccTLD

Some want it that way and some don't.

 

[AdamSnow]

Could be province/state too...

I know some around here are whatever.on.ca (Ontario, Canada)

 

[jjones]

Originally posted by: logic1485
my point was, why are some TLDs composed of two parts, wherease some others are composed of only the country code? i admint, there are things such as .ac.be for academic institutions, but why only .be, and not .co.be?

It depends upon the country and what they want to do. Mexico, for example, used to have just a .mx domain name but then reserved all of that for, I believe, government use and now only issue domains using .com.mx.

Edit: They also use the .gob, .net, etc. followed by the country code. This allows them to have many more potential domain name registrations than just using a .mx