I don’t understand why they don’t just migrate .io into a non-country code domain. Hell, they could auction it off to anybody (company, country, or person) who wants it bad enough. Let it live alongside the other custom domains.
If the country that owns IO ceases to exist then IANA will just make it an ICANN generic TLD. Such a widely used TLD won’t be allowed to disappear. The rules are all made up anyway.
Two letter TLDs are reserved for countries. No gTLDs use a two letter TLD.
I guess in theory you could make a new country called “Input Output”, get ISO3166 to be updated to specify “IO” as your country’s two letter abbreviation, then request the IO TLD from IANA.
Maybe they could make .io into a 3-character gTLD by adding a character to it. Moving all of the websites (except those actually relevant to the territory) over to a new gTLD in unison seems like it would reduce confusion for the people who use those sites. Knowing that acme.io is now acme.iox (or w/e) would make it easier on everyone.
Two letter TLDs are reserved for countries. No gTLDs use a two letter TLD.
According to the rules set by the org that controls the fate of IO. They can easily change the rules if they wanted. There is a vested interest in not losing IO, and nothing but their own rule to stop them. Who’s to tell them they can’t do whatever they want in this matter?
They could change the rules, but it took them many, many years to get to finalize the rules they’ve got today. IANA isn’t exactly a fast-moving organization.
Oh wow! And that reservation makes so much sense under these circumstances. Obviously, we could never consider the possibility of a three-letter TLD for a country or migrating a two-letter TLD to a non country specific name because reasons.
Can you imagine what would happen if you were to look at a domain like .io and not immediately know it was a country tld? There would be chaos. Rioting in the streets
The reason is because ccTLDs need to match the alpha-2 code of the country as it exists in ISO 3166-1. This is because IANA doesn’t want to be the arbiter of which countries exist or not. You get a code, you get a ccTLD. No code, no ccTLD.
ccTLDs need to match the alpha-2 code of the country as it exists in ISO 3166-1
Not to refute your point or anything but just wanted to point out that there are two exceptions in popular use… One of the top used ones in fact, the United Kingdom, whose code is actually GB. .gb is reserved but not in use and instead the .uk ccTLD is used.
The coexistence of .gb and .uk is only because .uk predates the rule by a few months. You could say it was grandfathered in, though they are both reserved in ISO 3166-1. This one isn’t a good example of something that can happen decades after the rule was put in place.
As for .eu it isn’t really an exception, .eu is reserved in ISO 3166-1.
Yes I have. ccTLDs are 2 characters, as I specified above. To make .io into a gTLD you’d need to add a third character, which wouldn’t do anything to help the companies who are using .io today.
The companies who are using .io who aren’t associated with the Indian Ocean Territories will however have 5 years (or 10 if an extension is requested) to migrate to a gTLD before .io is retired.
I don’t understand why they don’t just migrate .io into a non-country code domain. Hell, they could auction it off to anybody (company, country, or person) who wants it bad enough. Let it live alongside the other custom domains.
That’s exactly what will happen.
That is not what will happen. 2 letter TLDs are reserved for ccTLDs.
Yep. This is such a weird fear monger topic.
If the country that owns IO ceases to exist then IANA will just make it an ICANN generic TLD. Such a widely used TLD won’t be allowed to disappear. The rules are all made up anyway.
Two letter TLDs are reserved for countries. No gTLDs use a two letter TLD.
I guess in theory you could make a new country called “Input Output”, get ISO3166 to be updated to specify “IO” as your country’s two letter abbreviation, then request the IO TLD from IANA.
Maybe they could make .io into a 3-character gTLD by adding a character to it. Moving all of the websites (except those actually relevant to the territory) over to a new gTLD in unison seems like it would reduce confusion for the people who use those sites. Knowing that acme.io is now acme.iox (or w/e) would make it easier on everyone.
According to the rules set by the org that controls the fate of IO. They can easily change the rules if they wanted. There is a vested interest in not losing IO, and nothing but their own rule to stop them. Who’s to tell them they can’t do whatever they want in this matter?
They could change the rules, but it took them many, many years to get to finalize the rules they’ve got today. IANA isn’t exactly a fast-moving organization.
Because two letter TLDs are reserved for countries. They made the mistake already with .su
Oh wow! And that reservation makes so much sense under these circumstances. Obviously, we could never consider the possibility of a three-letter TLD for a country or migrating a two-letter TLD to a non country specific name because reasons.
Can you imagine what would happen if you were to look at a domain like .io and not immediately know it was a country tld? There would be chaos. Rioting in the streets
I know right? I’m constantly confused by this when I’m dealing with kubernetes networking
The reason is because ccTLDs need to match the alpha-2 code of the country as it exists in ISO 3166-1. This is because IANA doesn’t want to be the arbiter of which countries exist or not. You get a code, you get a ccTLD. No code, no ccTLD.
Not to refute your point or anything but just wanted to point out that there are two exceptions in popular use… One of the top used ones in fact, the United Kingdom, whose code is actually
GB. .gb is reserved but not in use and instead the .uk ccTLD is used.The other one is .eu
It makes me wonder if Mauritius could/would request an exception for
.ioin a similar manner to what the UK did with having.gbAND.uk.The coexistence of .gb and .uk is only because .uk predates the rule by a few months. You could say it was grandfathered in, though they are both reserved in ISO 3166-1. This one isn’t a good example of something that can happen decades after the rule was put in place.
As for .eu it isn’t really an exception, .eu is reserved in ISO 3166-1.
You haven’t addressed the case of migraine to a non geographic tld
Yes I have. ccTLDs are 2 characters, as I specified above. To make .io into a gTLD you’d need to add a third character, which wouldn’t do anything to help the companies who are using .io today.
The companies who are using .io who aren’t associated with the Indian Ocean Territories will however have 5 years (or 10 if an extension is requested) to migrate to a gTLD before .io is retired.