Boulder Community Network

Internet Domain and Country Code Names

This page is a brief guide to information about domain name registration plus a listing of all the country or application names to domain abbreviation assignments used on the Internet.

First, a brief explanation of Internet addressing nomenclature is in order - the basic format of an Internet address is -

• user_domain_name.upper_level_domain

• user@user_domain_name.upper_level_domain

A second nomenclature to be aware of is the numerical Internet or Internet Protocol address (IP). This is a unique address for every computer linked to the Internet which consists of four numbers, each less than 256, and written as -

• 000.000.000.000

The country codes are based on ISO 3166 two- or three-character codes, but they also correspond to the names assigned by IANA for Upper-level Internet domains. NOTE that these assignments are current as of June 14, 2000.

See the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for more information about domain names, IP numbers, and technical support.

• http://www.icann.org/

For information on the federal role in Domain Name management -

• http://www.ntia.doc.gov/

And see the Internic Organization (which is a follow-on to the old Internic Group that managed the Internet in the ArpaNet days) for more information on domain names and registrars.

• http://www.internic.net/

Here is the web equivalent of the whois command -

• http://www.whois.net/

Another dmain name lookup with a different approach -

• http://www.betterwhois.com/

When all else fails, or you have just an IP (Internet Protocol) number, what do you do? Here is a site that checks overseas registries and tries to translate all valid IP numbers (including "cloaked" ones) to their email or postal address:

• http://combat.uxn.com/

Here is a newletter that examines some of the domain name registars and rates them on various criteria -

• Domain Name Buyers Guide

Here is a copy of the Domain and Country Code Assignments -