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Revision as of 16:31, 4 August 2009 by 63.254.107.158 (talk) (Ben)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)| Introduced | 1985 |
|---|---|
| TLD type | Country code top-level domain |
| Status | Active |
| Registry | Nominet UK |
| Sponsor | Nominet UK |
| Intended use | Entities connected with United Kingdom |
| Actual use | Very popular in UK, especially .co.uk subdomain - as of December 2008 there were 7,277,700 registrations |
| Registration restrictions | None for .co.uk, .me.uk, and .org.uk; other subdomains have differing restrictions |
| Structure | At third level, beneath generic-category 2nd level domains, except under .sch.uk where registration is at fourth level; no second-level registrations (a few old registrations grandfathered) |
| Dispute policies | DRS Policy |
| Registry website | nic.uk |
.uk is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United Kingdom. As of July 2008, it is the fifth most popular top-level domain worldwide (after .com, .cn, .de and .net), with over 7 million registrations.
The use of .uk rather than .gb for the top-level domain is due to its pre-existing use in the (now obsolete) JANET Name Registration Scheme in which the order of address components were reversed. .uk was made available in DNS to simplify the translation to and from these addresses. There were plans for eventual transition to .gb to accord with correct usage, but this never occurred; the use of .uk is now entrenched as it is impossible to register a .gb domain.
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Second-level domains
- .ac.uk - academic (tertiary education and research establishments) and learned societies
- .co.uk - general use (usually commercial)
- .gov.uk - government (central and local)
- .ltd.uk - limited companies
- .me.uk - general use (usually personal)
- .mod.uk - Ministry of Defence and HM Forces public sites
- .net.uk - ISPs and network companies
- .nhs.uk - National Health Service institutions
- .nic.uk - network use only (Nominet UK)
- .org.uk - general use (usually for non-profit organisations)
- .parliament.uk - parliament (MPs, etc, and also the Scottish Parliament)
- .plc.uk - public limited companies
- .police.uk - police forces
- .sch.uk - local education authorities, schools, primary and secondary education, community education
Rejected second-level domains
- .soc.uk - proposed for Social and Society use.
- .cym.uk - A domain for Wales; it did not have support of the Welsh internet community, with .cym domain being proposed and full supported by the Welsh Assembly and the people of Wales.
- .scot.uk - A domain for Scotland; it did not have the support of the Scottish internet community with, .sco domain being proposed and full supported by the Scottish Parliament and the people of Scotland.
Individual institutions
- .bl.uk and .british-library.uk - British Library
- .icnet.uk - Cancer Research UK
- .jet.uk - Joint European Torus
- .nls.uk - National Library of Scotland it also held another domain .national-library-scotland.uk which has now been deleted.
- .parliament.uk - Parliament of the United Kingdom (the placement of parliament.uk outside of .gov.uk reflects the British constitutional convention of the importance of parliamentary sovereignty over, and independence from, the executive government. Note that .scottish.parliament.uk relates to the devolved Scottish Parliament, not to part of the UK Parliament.)
- .nhs.uk - National Health Service sites, including at the top-level the public health information portal NHS Choices
- .mod.uk - Ministry of Defence
Inactive second-level domains
- .govt.uk - former government domain, now deleted and replaced by .gov.uk
- .orgn.uk - former non-profit organisations domain, now deleted and replaced by .org.uk
- .lea.uk - local education authorities; since fallen out of use.
- .mil.uk - the Ministry of Defence have always used mod.uk for their external domain, but use mil.uk on their private network. mil.uk exists only as a CNAME (alias) for mod.uk in the .uk zone file.
- .nel.uk - National Engineering Laboratory (now TÜV NEL) - now deleted.
.co.uk, .ltd.uk, .me.uk, .net.uk, .nic.uk, .org.uk, .plc.uk and .sch.uk are managed by Nominet UK and except for .nic.uk are available for registration by the public (though they all carry various degrees of restrictions). The other second-level domains are managed by various government agencies, and generally more strongly controlled.
Accessing the .uk zone file
The information in this entry on current domains under .uk can be verified by direct examination of the .uk zone file, which is open to ordinary DNS transfer using AXFR as an intended policy of Nominet UK.
Allocation of domain names
Allocations are on a strict first-come, first-served basis to qualified applicants. There are no territorial restrictions: applicants need not have any connection to the UK.
.co.uk is by far the most used of the domains, followed by .org.uk. .plc.uk and .ltd.uk are only rarely used.
The intended restriction of .co.uk to companies is purely nominal; in practice it is open to any and all applicants. Likewise, whilst .org.uk is for organisations, there are no restrictions on registering domains. While .me.uk originally had no restrictions on registrants it has since been tightened up to require registrants to be natural persons (i.e. not companies, etc).
However, registrants in .ltd.uk must be, and remain, private limited companies incorporated under the UK Companies Acts. In addition, names can only be registered if they correspond (in accordance with the algorithm in the rules of registration) with the exact company name, as recorded at the companies registry at Companies House. The same conditions apply for .plc.uk, but for public limited companies. Neither of these domains are widely used.
.net.uk is more open, but the Nominet regulations still mean that a registrant must be an ISP, or a similar body, and that the domain is not used for providing services to end-users. .nic.uk, however, is limited solely to domains operated by Nominet.
.ac.uk domains are intended for the use of higher education institutions (beyond compulsory education age), and are also used by some academic support bodies such as the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (www.ucas.ac.uk), public research establishments, and learned societies such as the Royal Society (royalsoc.ac.uk). Primary and secondary education uses .sch.uk.
sch.uk
Unusually, .sch.uk domains are allocated at the fourth level, with the third level being taken up by the name of the local authority (LA, previously LEA or Local Education Authority) e.g. schoolname.leaname.sch.uk. For example, The Campion School in Hornchurch has the domain name http://www.campion.havering.sch.uk/ , and West Exe Technology College in Exeter has the domain name http://www.westexetc.devon.sch.uk. Previously applications were made in the normal way, but after Nominet came to an arrangement with the education authorities, one domain per school was issued automatically.
See also
External links
References
- http://www.nominet.org.uk/intelligence/statistics/registration/
- DENIC eG - Comparison of international Domain Numbers
- The registration process and a list of domain names for the .police.uk domain was released by the National Policing Improvement Agency under a Freedom of Information request on 10 March 2009.
- "Campion School Havering". Archived from the original on 2009-06-01. Retrieved 2009-05-30.
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