.Brand of opportunities

The new gTLD programme is borne out of a lengthy policy development process. It facilitates greater innovation and choice within the Internet’s addressing system and allows the opportunity to create new digital identities.

Generic top level domains (gTLDs) are the domain suffixes with an extension of three or more characters. They are part of the structure that forms the Internet’s global addressing system, or domain-name system (DNS), and are used to route traffic through the Internet.

In total, there are now 21 gTLDs. These are made up of the original eight: .com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, .org and .arpa. Then a further seven were approved in 2000: .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name and .pro. Finally, in 2004, there was an addition of six gTLDs: .asia, .cat, .jobs, .mobi, .tel and .travel.

.Brand—the basics