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to use by the U.S. military).

.mobi - mobile devices (must be used for mobile-compatible sites in accordance with international standards).

.museum - museums (verified legitimate museums).

.name - individuals, by name (an open TLD; any person or entity is permitted to register however, registrations may be challenged later if they are not by verifiable individuals (or the owners of fictional characters) in accordance with the domain's charter).

.net - network (an open TLD; any person or entity is permitted to register, but it is mostly used by those involved in the running of the Net, like IPS providers).

.org - organization (an open TLD; any person or entity is permitted to register).

.pro - professions (currently reserved for licensed doctors, attorneys, and certified public accountants only, professionals seeking to register a .pro domain must provide their registrar with the appropriate credentials).

.tel - Internet communication services

.travel - travel and travel-agency related sites (legitimate travel-related entity).

I also read that the porn industry is still trying to get .xxx listed for porn only, but they were again turned down this year. After the gTLD's comes the ccTLD's or country code top level domain, often seen as ww.whatever.co.uk. This domain extension level, deals strictly with location in a country, each country throughout the world has a ccTLD. As I said before, these can also be used in combination with the gTLD's e.g. ww.whatever.org.uk.

A few examples of a ccTLD would be:

.co.uk - United Kingdom

.co.us - United States of America

.co.zw - Zimbabwe

.co.za - South Africa

gTLD's and ccTLD's can serve you the browser, as a quickly identifiable extension without having to go to the site first. Unfortunately unless you register under a domain name that someone already registered and is now letting others use, acquiring your own particular domain name costs money. Personally I'm not quite sure why this is the case; maybe it's the cost of hosting the name on a server. But I hope that this does change, and at least some domain names in their various forms become free on a first get first served basis.

Learn more about this author, Ivor W. Hartmann.
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