History of the .uk Domain Name
According to various reliable sources, as of April 2010 .uk (UK’s Internet country code top-level domain – ccTLD) is the fourth most popular top-level domain in the world (right after .com, .de, and .net), and has over 8.6 million registra
tions.
Like many other ccTLDs, in the early days of Internet, it was originally delegated to an individual by Jonathan Postel (an American computer scientist who has made numerous important contributions to the development of the Internet, specially regarding its standards).
In time, it passed to Dr Willie Black from the UK Education and Research Networking Association. Domain requests were emailed, manually screened by and forwarded to the UK Naming Committee before being processed by UKERNA.
The Naming Committee was at the time organised as a mailing list to which all proposed names were circulated. The members considered those proposals under a ruleset that was insisting that domain names should be very close or identical to a registered business name of the registrant. Any name could be objected to, and if only a small number of objections were received, the name would be refused. Also, there was a restriction that a company can have only a single domain name.
By the middle of the 1990s the growth of the Internet, and the arrival of the World Wide Web was pushing domain name registrations requests up to levels unmanageable by a group of part-time voluntary managers. Oliver Smith (Demon Internet) forced the issue by providing the committee with a variety of automated tools, which formalised and automated the naming process. This allowed a lot more registrations to be processed more reliably and quickly, and inspired different individuals to explore more resourceful approaches to domain name registration.
Different plans were put forward for the possible domain management, and Dr Black stepped up with a daring proposal for a not-for-profit commercial entity to properly deal with the .uk domain. Although commercial interests initially hesitated at this, Nominet UK was formed to be the .uk Network Information Centre, and it continues this role to this day.
Nominet UK began registering domain names in August 1996 and today is officially recognised by the UK Government as the manager of the .uk TLD. Registering a domain name directly with Nominet UK is possible, but it is quicker and cheaper to register it via a Nominet tag holder.
Some of the earliest domain name registrations (even before the creation of Nominet UK)
include:
mod.uk (Ministry of Defence)
parliament.uk (UK Parliament)
british-library.uk (The British Library)
nls.uk (The National Library of Scotland)
nhs.uk (The National Health Service)
Today, the .uk top level domain is separated into a variety of second level domains (SLD). Registering a domain name within the SLD should correspond to the type of the activity of the registrant.
For example: .co.uk for commercial enterprises, .org.uk for non-commercial organisations, .me.uk for personal domains, .ltd.uk and .plc.uk for registered company names, .net.uk for Internet Service Providers, .ac.uk for academic societies, .gov.uk for government bodies, etc.
Sources:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.uk
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominet_UK
3. http://www.nominet.org.uk/about/background/history/
Rich Text Area Toolbar Bold (Ctrl + B) Italic (Ctrl + I) Strikethrough (Alt + Shift + D) Unordered list (Alt + Shift + U) Ordered list (Alt + Shift + O) Blockquote (Alt + Shift + Q) Align Left (Alt + Shift + L) Align Center (Alt + Shift + C) Align Right (Alt + Shift + R) Insert/edit link (Alt + Shift + A) Unlink (Alt + Shift + S) Insert More Tag (Alt + Shift + T) Toggle spellchecker (Alt + Shift + N) ▼ Toggle fullscreen mode (Alt + Shift + G) Show/Hide Kitchen Sink (Alt + Shift + Z) Newsletter Functions Format – Paragraph Paragraph ▼ Underline Align Full (Alt + Shift + J) Select text color ▼ Paste as Plain Text Paste from Word Remove formatting Insert custom character Outdent Indent Undo (Ctrl + Z) Redo (Ctrl + Y) Help (Alt + Shift + H) According to various reliable sources, as of April 2010 .uk (UK’s Internet country code top-level domain – ccTLD) is the fourth most popular top-level domain in the world (right after .com, .de, and .net), and has over 8.6 million registrations. Like many other ccTLDs, in the early days of Internet, it was originally delegated to an individual by Jonathan Postel (an American computer scientist who has made numerous important contributions to the development of the Internet, specially regarding its standards). In time, it passed to Dr Willie Black from the UK Education and Research Networking Association. Domain requests were emailed, manually screened by and forwarded to the UK Naming Committee before being processed by UKERNA. The Naming Committee was at the time organised as a mailing list to which all proposed names were circulated. The members considered those proposals under a ruleset that was insisting that domain names should be very close or identical to a registered business name of the registrant. Any name could be objected to, and if only a small number of objections were received, the name would be refused. Also, there was a restriction that a company can have only a single domain name. By the middle of the 1990s the growth of the Internet, and the arrival of the World Wide Web was pushing domain name registrations requests up to levels unmanageable by a group of part-time voluntary managers. Oliver Smith (Demon Internet) forced the issue by providing the committee with a variety of automated tools, which formalised and automated the naming process. This allowed a lot more registrations to be processed more reliably and quickly, and inspired different individuals to explore more resourceful approaches to domain name registration. Different plans were put forward for the possible domain management, and Dr Black stepped up with a daring proposal for a not-for-profit commercial entity to properly deal with the .uk domain. Although commercial interests initially hesitated at this, Nominet UK was formed to be the .uk Network Information Centre, and it continues this role to this day. Nominet UK began registering domain names in August 1996 and today is officially recognised by the UK Government as the manager of the .uk TLD. Registering a domain name directly with Nominet UK is possible, but it is quicker and cheaper to register it via a Nominet tag holder. Some of the earliest domain name registrations (even before the creation of Nominet UK) include: mod.uk (Ministry of Defence) parliament.uk (UK Parliament) british-library.uk (The British Library) nls.uk (The National Library of Scotland) nhs.uk (The National Health Service) Today, the .uk top level domain is separated into a variety of second level domains (SLD). Registering a domain name within the SLD should correspond to the type of the activity of the registrant. For example: .co.uk for commercial enterprises, .org.uk for non-commercial organisations, .me.uk for personal domains, .ltd.uk and .plc.uk for registered company names, .net.uk for Internet Service Providers, .ac.uk for academic societies, .gov.uk for government bodies, etc. Sources: 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.uk 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominet_UK 3. http://www.nominet.org.uk/about/background/history/ Path : p
