Now that ICANN, the domain name registration group, is expanding the domain
name suffix list, I thought it might be helpful to go over the Natural History of the Domain Name.
From the records I have seen, the early history was a bit chaotic.
That’s was part of the impetus to organize a bit better, I’m sure.
The first domains were to be considered general purpose domains and were defined in late 1984.
(There seems to be a little symbolism working here.)
These domains are the ones you are probably familiar with. com,edu,mil,org and gov.
In the beginning they had a specialized use and now they are really pretty much open for everything.
In early 1985 the list was put into use with the addition of .net. So now there were six domain name suffixes
Another addition ,in late 1988, .int , was produced at the behest of NASA. they wanted a name
that would reflect their character because they were a global organization and that they wanted it to be used for some infrastructure changes.
It seems that in Mid 2000 the IAB wanted to close the .int domain in favor of .arpa domains .
They said the future of databases would be in .arpa.
This means that by the mid 1990’s there was pressure for more domain names to be introduced.
The head of the IANA actually did invite applications or proposals from interested parties.
These were under the guidelines that were made in early 1995.
In late 200, ICANN, the domains registry, added 7 more suffixes and has now added 6 more domains names you can buy.
The newest ones are :,jobs, .mobi, .cat, .post , .tel and .travel .
So now ICANN handles domain registration for more domains than ever before.
This will organize things a little more in MHOP . What do you think?