- 1-Bit Color
The number of colors per pixel that a particular graphics file can store. Each pixel is represented by one bit, which is either black or white.
- 10 Base-T
Standard Ethernet which transmits at 10 Mbps.
- 100 Base-T
Fast Ethernet which transmits at 100 Mbps and requires Fiber Optics transmission.
- 100PC
Only 100% post-consumer fibers are used to manufacture the sheet.
No new trees are consumed.
- 16mo
A book that is up to 6” tall.
Also see Sextodecimo.
- 24-Bit Color
True Color systems use 24 bits per pixel, allowing them to display 16.7 million different colors per pixel.
- 24mo
A book that is up to 5” tall.
- 3.5 inch Floppy Disk
An inexpensive removable storage device which is easy to use and compatible with almost every system. Capacity is limited – generally 1.44 MB at a time.
- 30PC
30% post-consumer fibers are used to manufacture the sheet, meeting EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) guidelines for recycled papers.
- 32-Bit Color
Color systems use 32 bits (8 bits x 4 channels-CMYK) per pixel.
- 32mo
A book that is up to 5” tall.
- 48mo
A book that is up to 4” tall.
- 50/50
50% bamboo fibers and 50% post-consumer fibers make up the sheet. Bamboo is the optimum alternative fiber, tree-free choice in fibers. The bamboo is harvested on farms, specifically for manufacturing purposes. No bamboo is removed from wildlife areas.
- 56K Line
A telephone circuit on copper wire using 56Kbps capacity for data or voice traffic.
- 64K Line
A telephone circuit on copper wire using 64Kbps capacity for data or voice traffic.
- 64mo
A book that is up to 3” tall.
- 8-Bit Color/Grayscale
In 8-bit color mode, the color monitor uses 8 bits for each pixel, making it possible to display 2 to the 8th power (256) different colors or shades of gray.
- 8vo
Refers to the size of a Book; the most common book size since the early 17th century, an octavo book averages about 6” x 9”.
The term originally referred to the number of folds (8) in a standard book-printing sheet, but it now commonly refers to size.
Also see Octavo.
- .aero
Aeroplane
A generic top-level domain gTLD used on the Internet’s Domain Name System.
It is the first gTLD based on a single industry, and is reserved for aviation-related businesses.
It was created in 2002 and is operated by SITA. There is also a Dot Aero Council created and controlled by SITA, which SITA supposedly consults on .aero policies.
The .aero domain is reserved for companies, organizations, associations, government agencies, and individuals in aviation and related industries.
Currently, two-letter codes under .aero are reserved for airlines according to the IATA Airline Designators, while three-letter codes are reserved for airports, according to the IATA airport codes.
- .aiff
Audio Interchange File Format/r/n/r/nA sound file extension used on PCs.
- .arpa
An Internet top-level domain TLD used exclusively for Internet-infrastructure purposes.
The .arpa TLD was originally intended to be a temporary measure to facilitate the transition to the Domain Name System.
The ARPANET was the predecessor to the Internet established by the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), and when the Domain Name System was introduced in 1985, ARPANET host names were initially converted to domain names by adding .arpa to the end.
Hostnames in other networks were also sometimes converted to pseudo-domain-style addresses by adding endings such as .uucp and .bitnet, though these were never added to the Internet root as formal TLDs.
Domain names of this form were rapidly phased out by replacing them with domain names using the other, more informative, TLDs.
However, deleting .arpa once it had served its transitional purpose proved to be impractical, because in-addr.arpa was used for reverse DNS lookup for IP addresses.
For example the IP address 145.97.39.155 is mapped to a host name by issuing a DNS query for the PTR record for the special host name 155.39.97.145.in-addr.arpa.
- .asia
A generic top-level domain proposed by the DotAsia Organization, with the back-end registry to be operated by Afilias.
- .biz
Business
Ageneric top-level domain TLD intended for domains to be used by businesses; the name is a phonetic spelling of the first syllable of “business.”
It was created to relieve some of the demand for the finite domain names available in the .com top-level domain, and to provide an alternative to businesses whose preferred .com domain name had already been registered by another party.
There are no specific legal or geographic qualifications to register a .biz domain name, except that it must be for “bona fide business or commercial use” (i.e. no personal or “soap box” sites, and no cybersquatting), and the usual legal remedies for trademark infringement are applicable.
It was created in 2001 along with several others as the first batch of new gTLDs approved by ICANN following the boom in interest in the internet in the 1990s.
It is administered by Neulevel.
- .cat
.cat TLD is a generic domain, that is, not defined in terms of a territory like the ccTLDs.
Its policy has been developed by ICANN and Fundació puntCAT.
It was approved in September 2005.
It is intended to be used to highlight Catalan language and culture
- .cc
-
ccTLD for The Territory of Cocos and Keeling Islands
-
Administered by VeriSign through a subsidiary company eNIC, which promotes it for international registration as “the next .com
-
- .cd
-
ccTLD for The Democratic Republic of Congo
-
Increasingly marketed by CD merchants and file sharing sites
-
- .com
Commercial
A generic top-level domain gTLD used on the Internet’s Domain Name System.
It was one of the original top-level domains, established in January 1985, and has grown to be the largest TLD in use.
It is currently operated by VeriSign. It is consistently pronounced as a word, dot-com, and has entered the common language this way.
Although .com domains are officially intended to designate commercial entities (others such as government agencies or educational institutions have different top-level domains assigned to them), there has been no restriction on who can register .com domains since the mid-1990s.
The opening of the .com registry to the public coincided with the commercialization and popularization of the Internet, and .com quickly became the most common top-level domain for websites. Many companies which flourished in the period between 1997-2001 (the time known as the “dot-com bubble”) went so far as to incorporate .com into the company name; these became known as dot-coms or dot-com companies.
This naming practice has reduced in frequency since 2001, however, due to a backlash against this boom and its subsequent bust
The introduction of .biz in 2001, which is restricted to businesses, has had little impact on the popularity of .com.
Although companies anywhere in the world can register .com domains, many countries have a second-level domain with a similar purpose under their own ccTLD.
Such second-level domains are usually of the form .com.xx or .co.xx, where xx is the ccTLD. Brazil (.com.br), Japan (.co.jp), New Zealand (.co.nz), India (.com.in), the People’s Republic of China (.com.cn), and the United Kingdom (.co.uk) are all examples.
Many noncommercial sites, such as those of nonprofit organizations or governments, use .com addresses.
Some consider this to be contrary to the domain’s original purpose and might say that a .org, .gov, or other more specific TLD might be more appropriate for such sites.
However, many organizations prefer the recognizability of a .com domain to a less familiar one.
As well, the original purposes of many of the top level domains have become irrelevant without restrictions on registrations.
Registrations are processed via registrars accredited by ICANN ; internationalized domain names are also accepted.
- .coop
Cooperatives
A generic top-level domain intended for the use of cooperatives.
It was a part of ICANN’s announcement in late 2000 of a phased release of seven new generic top-level domains gTLDs intended in part to take the pressure off the overcrowded .com domain.
It was backed by a coalition of interest groups, was developed by Poptel in the UK and became operational on January 30, 2002.
.coop is sponsored top-level domain and restricted to those who meet specified criteria: cooperative-type organizations or a wholly owned subsidiary.
Its sponsor is DotCooperation LLC (also known as dotCoop), which was created as a subsidiary of the American NCBA to operate the TLD.
Registrations are processed via accredited registrars.
- .edu
Education
The generic top-level domain for educational institutions, primarily those in the United States.
Created in January 1985 as one of the first top-level domains, .edu was originally intended for educational institutions anywhere in the world.
With few exceptions, however, only those in the United States registered such domains, while educational institutions in other countries usually used domain names under the appropriate country code TLD.
In some countries a second-level domain is used to indicate an educational institutions (e.g. .edu.mx in Mexico, .edu.au in Australia, .ac.uk and .sch.uk in the United Kingdom) and in others only the country code is used (e.g. in Canada and Germany).
In Germany, the second-level domain often has a prefix indicating the kind of institution (uni for Universitat, fh for Fachhochschule, for instance www.uni-erfurt.de and www.fh-erfurt.de) or, if there several institutions of the same type, the abbreviation of the institutions name (for instance www.fu-berlin.de, www.tu-berlin.de and www.hu-berlin.de for the three Berlin universities).
Examples of non-US .edu domain is the French polytechnique.edu, the Belgian solvay.edu, the Swedish korteboskolan.edu, Kosovo uni-pr.edu or the Indian nist.edu.
Many institutions whose primary sites are located in local second-level domains run mirror sites in the .edu domain, such as oxford.edu mirroring ox.ac.uk.
- .eu
ccTLD for The European Union
Made up of Twenty-Seven Member States
-
Austria
-
Belgium
-
Bulgaria
-
Cyprus
-
Czech Republic
-
Denmark
-
Estonia
-
Finland
-
France
-
Germany
-
Greece
-
Hungary
-
Ireland
-
Italy
-
Latvia
-
Lithuania
-
Luxembourg
-
Malta
-
Netherlands
-
Poland
-
Portugal
-
Romania
-
Slovakia
-
Slovenia
-
Spain
-
Sweden
-
United Kingdom
-
- .gg
-
ccTLD for The Bailiwick of Guernsey
-
Most often used by the gaming and gambling industry, particularly in relation to horse racing gee-gee
-
- .gov
Government
The generic top-level domain used by the United States federal and local government.
It was one of the original top-level domains, established in January 1985.
The U.S. is the only country that has a government-specific top-level domain in addition to its ccTLD.
Some U.S. federal agencies use .fed.us rather than .gov.
The Department of Defense and its subsidiary organizations use .mil.
Other countries typically use a second-level domain for this purpose, e.g., .gov.au for Australia, .govt.nz for New Zealand, (NZ), .gov.uk for the United Kingdom, .gc.ca for Canada, .gouv.fr for France and .guv.ro1 for Romania.
Since the United States controls the .gov TLD, it would be impossible for another country to create a domain ending in .gov, for example .jp.gov.
Some U.S. governmental entities use other domains, such as the use of .com domains by the United States Postal Service (usps.com) and the United States Army’s recruitment website (goarmy.com, this trend is repeated at the recruitment websites of the other branches of the U.S. Military).
Internet purists consider these usages to be improper, as these are governmental or military entities rather than commercial ones.
- .info
Informative
A generic top-level domain intended for informative websites, although its use is not restricted.
It was a part of ICANN’s highly publicized announcement, in late 2000, of a phased release of seven new generic top-level domains gTLDs.
The event was billed as the first addition of major gTLDs to the Internet since the DNS was developed in the 1980s.
The seven new gTLDs, selected from over 180 proposals, were meant in part to take the pressure off the overcrowded .com domain.
.info has been the most successful of the seven new domain names, with over 3 million domain names registered up to mid-2006.
In addition, over 1.6 million .info websites are in active and dedicated use.
In the immediate aftermath of September 11th, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority switched to the easier to remember mta.info website to lead users to latest information on schedules and route changes on the area’s transportation services.
Chomsky.info is another noteworthy .info domain used by political activist Noam Chomsky. Spain.info is used by Spain’s tourism board to promote visitors to come to Spain.
- .int
.int is a generic top-level domain “gTLD” used on the Internet’s Domain Name System.
According to current IANA policy, the .int “gTLD””:/glossary-of-printing-terms/gtld is reserved for international treaty organizations, and non-governmental organizations with “observer” status at the United Nations.
Additionally, .int was historically also used for “Internet infrastructure databases”.
The contents of .arpa had been slated to be moved into .int, but in 2000 the IAB recommended that no new infrastructure databases be added to .int and that .arpa retain its current use.
Its last remaining role was for reverse translation of IPv6 addresses under the .ip6.int zone.
This zone was officially turned off on 6 June 2006 in favour of .ip6.arpa, also administered by IANA.
The .eu.int sub-domain was used by the European Union-affiliated institutions. However, the aforementioned institutions’ domain names changed to the TLD .eu on May 9, 2006 (Europe Day).
The institutions’ previous “.eu.int” addresses will continue to be accessible for a transitional period of at least one year.
- .jobs
A top-level domain approved by ICANN on April 8, 2005 as a sponsored TLD as part of the second group of new TLD applications submitted in 2004.
It is restricted to employment-related sites.
It entered the root in September, 2005, and began accepting registrations later in the year.
- .mil
Military
The generic top-level domain for the United States Department of Defense and its subsidiary organizations.
It was one of the first top-level domains, created in January 1985.
The United States is the only country that has a top-level domain for its military.
Other countries often use second-level domains for this purpose, e.g., .mod.uk for the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence.
Although the United States military has its own top-level domain, it still uses .com domains for some of its recruitment sites, such as goarmy.com.
Internet purists consider this to be improper, as it is not a commercial entity.
Also, the military uses .edu domains for its service academies: the United States Military Academy, United States Naval Academy, and the United States Air Force Academy can all be reached using either an .edu or a .mil domain.
The official athletic program sites of all three academies use .com domains.
The Department of Defense is, however, also using some “vanity domains” within .mil in recent times, such as americasupportsyou.mil.
- .mobi
A top-level domain approved by ICANN as a sponsored TLD.
It will be restricted to mobile devices and sites providing services for them on the Mobile Web.
It is sponsored by a consortium of companies including Google, Microsoft, Vodafone, Samsung, Ericsson and Nokia.
Since many of the mobile devices which may use services under this domain are telephones, there is some overlap between the target market of this and the .tel domain, also approved by ICANN in the same round.
- .mp
ccTLD for The Northern Mariana Islands, officially the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)
- .museum
A gTLD used exclusively by museums, museum associations, and individual members of the museum profession, as these groups are defined by the ICOM.
In joint action with the J. Paul Getty Trust, ICOM established the Museum Domain Management Association (MuseDoma) for the purpose of submitting an application to ICANN for the creation of the new gTLD, and to operate it if the application was approved.
The .museum domain was entered into the root of Domain Name System on 20 October 2001, and was the first sponsored top-level domain to be instituted through ICANN’s action.
The idea behind this domain is that it will be beneficial for Internet users to have a segment of the TLD namespace reserved for the use of museums; a namespace whose conventions are defined by the museum community.
The .museum TLD will grant users a quick and intuitive way to verify the authenticity of a museum site.
Conversely, since it is a type of formal third-party certification, museums using this namespace obtain a way to assure visitors of the site’s validity.
- .name
A generic top-level domain (gTLD) intended for the use of individuals’ real names, nicknames, screen names, pseudonyms or other personal names.
It was delegated to Global Name Registry in 2001, although it did not become fully operational until January 2002.
Domains can be registered on the second level (foo.name) and the third level (foo.bar.name).
It is also possible to register an e-mail address on the form foo@bar.name together with, or instead of, the domain foo.bar.name.
Such an e-mail address is a forwarding account, and requires another e-mail address to be delivered to.
When a domain is registered on the third level (foo.bar.name), the second level (bar.name in this case) is shared, and may not be registered.
Further third level objects like baz.bar.name or bar@bar.name may be registered.
Other second level domains like foobar.name remain unaffected.
- .net
Network
A generic top-level domain gTLD used on the Internet’s Domain Name System. The .net gTLD is currently operated by VeriSign.
Registrations are processed via accredited registrars and internationalized domain names are also accepted.
.net was one of the original top-level domains (despite not being mentioned in RFC 920), created in January 1985.
It was initially intended for use by network oriented entities such as Internet service providers.
Currently, there are no formal restrictions on who can register a .net domain name.
Therefore, while still popular with network operators, it is often treated as a second .com.
In addition to being an abbreviation for “network”, “net” is also a romanisation of the Russian word ??? (“no”, also commonly romanised as the more acoustically appropriate “nyet”), and a domain name like “object.net” can be interpreted as “there is no object”. Some domains exploit this pun, for example mozga.net (brain absent) or putina.net (there is no Vladimir Putin).
- .nu
ccTLD for Niue
Marketed as resembling “new” in English and “now” in Nordic/Dutch. Also meaning “nude” in French.
- .org
Organization
A generic top-level domain gTLD used in the Internet’s Domain Name System.
In the typical style of most gTLDs, .org is sometimes pronounced in word form as ‘dot-org’ when spoken, although, also consistent with the style, not all users of the TLD agree on this usage.
.org was one of the original top-level domains, established in January 1985, originally intended for use by organizations that did not meet the requirements for other gTLDs .
Now anyone can register a .org domain. .org was the domain commonly recommended for use by individuals, although .name and .info are now alternatives.
The .org TLD has been operated since January 1, 2003 by Public Interest Registry.
Although organizations anywhere in the world can register .org domains, many countries have a second-level domain with a similar purpose under their own country code TLD.
Such second-level domains are usually of the form .org.xx or .or.xx, where xx is the ccTLD.
The .org TLD is occasionally associated with the open source/free software movement, as opposed to the .com domains used mostly by companies.
- .pro
Professional
A generic TLD.
It was created in 2002 and is operated by the Registry Services Corporation.
The intention of the domain is to signal to web visitors that the website owner is a professional with valid credentials, but so far .pro has not been popular.
.pro domains are very expensive compared to other domains. Professional credentials must be verified, and the domain costs $350, with a one-time $100 registration fee.
The .pro serves as an official certification that the website owner’s credentials are accurate.
.pro has three second level domains: .law.pro, .med.pro, and .cpa.pro, reserved for lawyers, doctors, and certified public accountants, respectively.
Direct second-level registrations were later opened up, with restrictions.
Registrations are processed via accredited registrars.
- .root
vrsn-end-of-zone-marker-dummy-record.root
A domain name listed in the DNS root zone as a diagnostic marker, whose presence demonstrates the root zone was not truncated upon loading by a root nameserver.
It could be argued it represents a top-level domain of .root, although technically no such delegation exists.
- .sit
A compression format and the corresponding file extension used primarily with Apple computers.
- .tel
A top-level domain approved byICANN as a sponsored TLD.
It would be restricted to “internet communication” services, and provide a supplement to the traditional numeric namespace for telecommunication services (i.e. telephone numbers).
- .travel
A top-level domain approved by ICANN on April 8, 2005 as a sponsored TLD in the second group of new TLD applications evaluated in 2004.
It is restricted to the use of travel agents, airlines, bed and breakfast operators, tourism bureaus, and others in the travel industry.
It is sponsored by Tralliance Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of TheGlobe.
- .us
ccTLD for The United States of America
The Internet country code top-level domain ccTLD for the United States of America, established in 1985.
Registrants of .us domains must be United States citizens, residents, or organizations, or a foreign entity with a presence in the United States.
Most registrants in the country have registered for .com, .net, .org and other gTLDs, rather than .us, which has traditionally primarily been used by many state and local governments (although any entity had the option of registering a .us domain).
In particular, the domains .gov and .mil have been reserved for US usage, and .edu is mostly limited to US entities (although a small number of non-United States educational institutions have managed to register there).