Networking Guide
Chapter 6, Configuring the Domain Name Service

The Internet domain structure

The Internet domain structure

In the United States, the Internet domain name space is divided into several organizational and geographical top-level domains. Other countries follow similar structures.

In the US, top-level domains include:

COM
commercial organizations

EDU
educational organizations

GOV
government organizations

INT
international organizations

MIL
military departments

NET
networking organizations

ORG
miscellaneous organizations

Geographical domains follow the standard ISO 3166, which contains abbreviations for each country (for example, ca, ch, it, for Canada, Switzerland, and Italy, respectively).