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The internet has expanded beyond traditional domains like .com or .org, with countries creating their own country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), such as us for the United States or uk for the United Kingdom. These ccTLDs are two letters instead of three and make sense as a designation for that country. Some ccTLDs are still active even if the country no longer exists. The range of Internet addresses is expanding, but it is not unlimited due to the finite number of countries.
The internet is full of different addresses these days. It’s not just the dot-com or dot-org or dot-gov world anymore. Countries are taking action now. This is where the ccTLD comes into play.
Internet address naming conventions are proliferating largely due to the explosion of interest in these things over the past decade or so. Having the freedom to create a website that ends in something other than .com is more powerful and more plausible every day. Common three-letter alternatives to .com are .mil for the military, .biz for business, and .int for international organizations.
The three-letter designations that end many Internet addresses, such as com, org, and gov, are called TLDs, or top-level domains. A completely different address area is also available, corresponding to the country where the website resides. These are called country codes and are two letters instead of three. The acronym for Country Code Top-level Domain is ccTLD.
Some examples of ccTLDs are us for the United States, uk for the United Kingdom, de for Germany, nz for New Zealand and, for example, for Egypt. Each ccTLD, when probed or compared to the country’s name or its dominant language, makes sense as a designation for that country. In some cases, the ccTLD is the first two letters of the country name, such as fr for France, th for Thailand, and ar for Argentina. Other countries, especially those that have two-word names, have their initials as ccTLDs, such as us for United States, sa for Saudi Arabia, and cr for Costa Rica.
Sometimes, a ccTLD is active even if the country for which it was created no longer exists. For example, dd was used for the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), cs was used for Czechoslovakia, and su was used for the Soviet Union. Czechoslovakia now consists of two countries: the Czech Republic, which has cz as the ccTLD, and the Slovak Republic, which has sk as the ccTLD.
The advent of the ccTLD has expanded the range of Internet addresses for websites. However, it is not unlimited. The world has only so many countries, even though the number of names on this list seems to be growing frequently. Yugoslavia, for example, has become a handful of countries, as has the Soviet Union. The sky isn’t the limit, even if it’s close.
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