Let's talk about domains. ccTLDs and IDNs, or a little about national (geographic) domains.
In our "Let's Talk About Domains" series, we've already talked about generic top-level domains –so-called gTLDsBut in addition to generic domains, there are a much larger number of national (geographical or country) top-level domains on the Internet – ccTLDs (country code top-level domains).
The names of such domains are often abbreviations of their countries. For Russia, the national domain is .RU, for Ukraine - .UA, for the United States - .US. If a user is registering a website intended for a local market, it makes sense to register it in the national domain. National domains often include second-level domains, which help more accurately identify the website's origin and are easier to register in than national top-level domains. For example, such domains might include .COM.UA, .COM.RU, .CO.UK, .NET.UA, .IN.UA,.PP.UA.
Some national top-level domains (ccTLDs) impose restrictions on domain registration. Ukraine is one such country: registering a domain name in the .UA domain is only permitted if a company or citizen of the country has a registered trademark for the corresponding name. Some domains only allow registration by citizens (residents) of certain countries.
Among the national domains, it's worth distinguishing so-called pseudo-national domains—domains that were delegated as national domains but are used as general-purpose domains. For example, the .TV domain (Tuvalu) is used as a generic top-level domain for television resources, while the .IM domain (Isle of Man) is used for instant messaging services. The domains of Montenegro (.ME) and Turkmenistan (.TM) have already been called competitors to the .COM domain—these domains can also be translated as "my" and "trademark."
IDN domains are a separate group. These are domain names containing characters from national alphabets. For example, two years ago, Russia launched its national IDN domain .РФ. Other IDN domains also exist, such as (امارات — UAE, السعودية — Saudi Arabia, مصر — Egypt). Ukraine has been fighting for the .УКР domain for several years now. Meanwhile, mixed domains can be registered on the Ukrainian Internet—Cyrillic domains in the Latin top-level domains .COM.UA / .KIEV.UA, for example, the domain.com.ua. And recently, it became possible to use apostrophes in such domains.
In the next issues of our "Domain School" we will present to our readers a general list of national ccTLD domains.
