ccTLD Domains - nations

In addition to the generic/global TLDs there are geopolitical TLDs: one for each country, for Antarctica and for several territories. A list of those Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) is given below. The territories are identified on the following page.

Most of the ccTLDs include several Second Level Domains (2LDs), discussed later in this profile.

Each ccTLD is identified using a two-character International Organization for Standardization (ISO) identifier. That identifier is drawn from the ISO 3166-1 list, managed by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency and envisaged as politically neutral.

Sites within the Australian domain space are for example identified with the dot-au code. At present, there are 244 ccTLDs.

When the internet was first established the ccTLDs were envisaged as simple identifiers, rather than the sovereign property of individual states. Inevitably, that's changed, with governments positioning themselves to exploit a 'strategic resource' and administration of most ccTLDs moving from one or two individuals to a body that is embedded in national telecommunications or commercial law. An example is Australia, discussed here.

No international authority currently exists to govern the use of country domains. As a result, the rules for who can register an entity within a ccTLD vary from country to country. For example, Moldova (dot-md) and Armenia (dot-am) have granted private companies the right to sell domestic ccTLD domain names to anyone. Sweden limits the dot-se ccTLDs to its own residents or people/companies with "legitimate" business in Sweden.

Political changes have meant that particular ccTLDs, such as those for the USSR and Zaire, are now no longer used. For example the 1997 ISO 3166-1 list included 'zr' for Zaire. When Zaire became the Democratic Republic of the Congo' the ISO code (and thus the ccTLD) changed to 'cd'.



    next page  (ccTLDs - territories)