Cybertelecom Federal Internet Law & Policy An Educational Project

DNS: ccTLD

ccTLDs are under the authority of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and are delegated to nations for administration.  ICANN generally creates a ccTLD for country codes listed in  ISO 3166 (ICANN has also created dot EU and dot Asia). This process was originally implemented in order to avoid having the DNS authority determine what is and is not a country. [RFC 1591]

Countries are permitted to administer their ccTLDs pursuant to their own policies.  Some countries, such as Tuvalu, have sought to exploit their ccTLDs in the market; .tv is marketed as the TLD for television.  Other countries have followed restrictive policies, permitting registrations only from residents of their own country.  See, for example, the policy of the Isle of Man.  Historically, because of the casual manner of administration of ccTLDs, it was not uncommon that a ccTLD was administered by an entity that had no direct ties to the related country. This has created problems where those countries have sought to gain control of the ccTLDs or where the third-parties have inefficiently managed the ccTLD space. Getting a ccTLD online can be a source of significant national pride. See experience of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

A ccTLD issue is the introduction of internationalize domain names using non ASCII characters.

One issue is the possibility of ccTLD using different alphabets.

Documents

• J Postel, IETF RFC 1591, Domain Name System Structure and Delegation (1994)
• " The IANA is not in the business of deciding what is and what is not a country. The selection of the ISO 3166 list as a basis for country code top-level domain names was made with the knowledge that ISO has a procedure for determining which entities should be and should not be on that list." Sec. 4.2
• Guidelines for the Implementation of Internationalized Domain Names Version 2.1, ICANN 22 February 2006

Papers

• Sovereign Domains A Declaration of Independence of ccTLDs from Foreign Control, Richmond JOLT 12/18/02
• UN, ECommerce and Development Report UNCTAD/SDTE/ECB/2 (2002) (section dealing with ccTLDs)

Links

• ccTLDs
• World Wide Alliance of Top Level Domain-names
• ccTLDs in chronological order of Top Level Domain creation at the Internic.
• ccTLDs and the corresponding NIC-handles in alphabetical order of names
• World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
• WIPO Ecommerce ccTLD Database
• World Wide Alliance of Top Level Domain-names
• ccTLDs in chronological order of Top Level Domain creation at the Internic.
• ccTLDs and the corresponding NIC-handles in alphabetical order of name

Notes

2/3 of ccTLDs are hosted in their own countries. but a lot of those that aren't are really tiny countries. 18 ccTLDs aren't slaved to the core - meaning that they can be cut off from the global net and is a violation of RFC 2182. Example - Kenya: Root server and exchange point is local and outside connectivity is satellite. - NANOG, by packetclearinghouse Winter 2006

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