[175328] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Why is .gov only for US government agencies?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Fred Baker (fred))
Mon Oct 20 12:50:37 2014
X-Original-To: nanog@nanog.org
From: "Fred Baker (fred)" <fred@cisco.com>
To: Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 16:50:28 +0000
In-Reply-To: <CAEmG1=oaDZjA=bB7wRK-BGiSfX1Fn1F-6K2Vc8uzXjdwT2OoYQ@mail.gmail.com>
Cc: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
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On Oct 19, 2014, at 5:05 AM, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> =
wrote:
> Wondering if some of the long-time list members
> can shed some light on the question--why is the
> .gov top level domain only for use by US
> government agencies? Where do other world
> powers put their government agency domains?
>=20
> With the exception of the cctlds, shouldn't the
> top-level gtlds be generically open to anyone
> regardless of borders?
>=20
> Would love to get any info about the history
> of the decision to make it US-only.
>=20
> Thanks!
>=20
> Matt
The short version is that that names were a process. In the beginning, =
hosts simply had names. When DNS came into being, names were transformed =
from =93some-name=94 to =93some-name.ARPA=94. A few of what we now all =
gTLDs then came into being - .com, .net, .int, .mil, .gov, .edu - and =
the older .arpa names quickly fell into disuse.=20
ccTLDs came later.
I=92ve been told that the reason God was able to create the earth in =
seven days was that He had no installed base. We do. The funny thing is =
that you=92ll see a reflection of the gTLDs underneath the ccTLDs of a =
number of countries - .ac, .ed, and the like.
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