Despite guidelines, assigning ccTLDs is tricky

Ever wondered how ccTLDs are assigned? ccTLDs are those two-letter codes at the end of the domain names. Associated Press has a very interesting story explaining the process, and why some ccTLDs disappear, such as .dd for East Germany following the reunification of the former East and West Germany.The story notes there are 250 of these country code top level domains for every country in the world and a number of territories. Australia, for example, has .au. But there is also .nf (Norfolk Island), .cx (Christmas Island), .hm (Heard Island and McDonald Islands) and .cc (Cocos (Keeling) Islands) at least.The article explains it is ICANN that gets to allocate these ccTLDs “based on standards set by the International Organization for Standardization, which in turn takes information from the United Nations.”But sometimes it gets tricky, as is the case with .su for the former Soviet Union with many people not wanting to give up their .su domain names – nostalgia is very big for some people.To read the full AP article, it is published in many places, but two places to read it are The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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