Getting your own TLD [hypothetical]

Gordon

I've always wondered how cool it would be to have your own registry (not sure if that's the correct name for it) ala .com .net .ie. If I had .gordon, I'd be happy. I'd make a website www.gordon.

Of course, it's probably not possible as I don't understand the details of TLD's , domains and registries and sub domains etc enough to know this. But it must be possible to have your own TLD if various countries and entities such as the .mobi can get one right?

If so - what would you need, bar a crap load of money presumably? And if you could make your own - what would you get?!

Arch-Stanton

There are two ways you could approach this;

1. Apply directly to ICAAN, there’s a fair bit of reading regarding the issue of a TLD extension.
2. You could purchase a domain extension from a body like unifiedroot, however, you will have to wait until all roots are resolved by every ISP.

The second option is relatively easy, but, many pundits believe that all roots will not converge, therefore it’s a waste of money. “So it’s a risk”

Personally I believe that they will and have registered .irl www.dotirl.com . It may not happen today or tomorrow, “but it is the future”.

I have had lots of people telling me I’m mad and roots will never converge, but on the upside I have learnt a lot about setting up servers to resolve the extension, and everything that comes with that.


.

mneylon

Arch-Stanton wrote:

I have had lots of people telling me I’m mad and roots will never converge, but on the upside I have learnt a lot about setting up servers to resolve the extension, and everything that comes with that.


.

And I'm one of them

Unless it's added to the root nameservers there's absolutely no point.

You can setup your own servers until the cows come home, but nobody else can see it..

If I ran my own dns on my home LAN for example I could easily create .michele and resolve arthur.michele to my desktop or whatever, but that wouldn't be of much use in the real world

seamus

blacknight wrote:

Unless it's added to the root nameservers there's absolutely no point.

You can setup your own servers until the cows come home, but nobody else can see it..

I agree.

Personally, I would prefer that any body would not be able to register a tld willy-nilly. The whole .com rush showed us the kind of mess that domains get into when people can register whatever the hell they like.

There's also the issue when (for example) you register the .gordon domain. In theory, one should be able to just type "gordon" into the address bar and if your DNS listings are set up, it'll direct you to the website at that address. However, most OSes, when presented with a single name, will assume it's a hostname on the local network. If it's unable to contact the host called "gordon" on the local network, it'll use it's own domain to try find the host - e.g. it'll search for gordon.boards.ie. But that host doesn't exist.
This limitation can be worked around by typing the fully qualified name (i.e. "gordon.") into the address bar, but imagine trying to explain the difference to end users, or convincing them that the dot at the end is important.

There are times though when I wish TLDs such as .google and .microsoft existed. I could save myself thousands of keystrokes per year