4 ms·

That's not entirely true. .su is an exceptional reservation but it's not the only one with a tld. For instance ".uk" exists and ".ac" exists. It's absolutely

That's not entirely true. .su is an exceptional reservation but it's not the only one with a tld. For instance ".uk" exists and ".ac" exists. It's absolutely possible that someone will asking for an exceptional reservation for IO at ISO and it can be kept alive forever.

lolinder 2y ago
> It's absolutely possible that someone will asking for an exceptional reservation for IO at ISO and it can be kept alive forever. I agree it's possible, I disagree with OP that it's a foregone conclusion. At this point if I were the owner of a .io domain I would treat that as the unlikely best case scenario and start looking at what domain I'd fall back to if ICANN sticks to their rules.
mywittyname 2y ago
I mean, the TLD .pizza exists, so could .io move to the same mechanism that allows those to exist? Or is it something like 2-3 character TLDs are reserved for country codes?
- mintplant 2y ago
  Two-character TLDs are reserved for country codes, yes.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Two character TLDs are reserved for country codes, and they're meant to reflect a very specific ISO-standardized list of country codes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 Breaking with ISO 3166-1 comes with the risk that a new ISO-standardized country cannot claim its TLD. So in order to reclaim the TLD as generic, startups dont just have to persuade ICANN, they have to make the case to ISO that IO is a significant enough code that it should be an "exceptional reservation" like UK, UN, EU, and SU.
- saaaaaam 2y ago
  .pizza is a gTLD (generic top level domain) rather than a ccTLD (country code top level domain). ICANN rules say that gTLDs have to have three characters or more. So you can have .xyz but not .xo
roryirvine 2y ago
.uk only exists because UKERNA was already using it (or, rather, UK.) for JANET's own X500-ish system that pre-dates the standardisation of DNS. At one point, it was intended that moving the UK's internet resources to .gb would be the final stage of the transition from the internal JANET system. By the time I first heard about that in the early 90s, that had already gained legendary "that'll never happen" status - and, sure enough, the transition was declared complete when the last UK.AC.SITE <-> ac.uk mail gateways were retired circa 1996.
- anotherhue 2y ago
  There are non GB UK countries though, or at least one in NI.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    .im
    - jamesog 2y ago
      The Isle of Man isn't part of the UK, but rather a Crown Dependency, as are Jersey (.je) and Guernsey (.gg): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Dependencies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Dependencies
  - alexchamberlain 2y ago
    Right, but confusingly, GB is the ISO 2 code for the United Kingdom, even though the United Kingdom is much bigger than Great Britain, where the GB abbreviation comes from.
    - anotherhue 2y ago
      Makes sense, also in keeping with the excessively complicated naming that thousands of years of dispute produces.
    - vidarh 2y ago
      Pet hate: Regularly running into dropdowns that list countries by name, but sort them by country code.

lolinder 2y ago

> It's absolutely possible that someone will asking for an exceptional reservation for IO at ISO and it can be kept alive forever. I agree it's possible, I disagree with OP that it's a foregone conclusion. At this point if I were the owner of a .io domain I would treat that as the unlikely best case scenario and start looking at what domain I'd fall back to if ICANN sticks to their rules.

mywittyname 2y ago

I mean, the TLD .pizza exists, so could .io move to the same mechanism that allows those to exist? Or is it something like 2-3 character TLDs are reserved for country codes?

mintplant 2y ago
Two-character TLDs are reserved for country codes, yes.
lolinder 2y ago
Two character TLDs are reserved for country codes, and they're meant to reflect a very specific ISO-standardized list of country codes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 Breaking with ISO 3166-1 comes with the risk that a new ISO-standardized country cannot claim its TLD. So in order to reclaim the TLD as generic, startups dont just have to persuade ICANN, they have to make the case to ISO that IO is a significant enough code that it should be an "exceptional reservation" like UK, UN, EU, and SU.
saaaaaam 2y ago
.pizza is a gTLD (generic top level domain) rather than a ccTLD (country code top level domain). ICANN rules say that gTLDs have to have three characters or more. So you can have .xyz but not .xo

roryirvine 2y ago

.uk only exists because UKERNA was already using it (or, rather, UK.) for JANET's own X500-ish system that pre-dates the standardisation of DNS. At one point, it was intended that moving the UK's internet resources to .gb would be the final stage of the transition from the internal JANET system. By the time I first heard about that in the early 90s, that had already gained legendary "that'll never happen" status - and, sure enough, the transition was declared complete when the last UK.AC.SITE <-> ac.uk mail gateways were retired circa 1996.

anotherhue 2y ago
There are non GB UK countries though, or at least one in NI.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  .im
  - jamesog 2y ago
    The Isle of Man isn't part of the UK, but rather a Crown Dependency, as are Jersey (.je) and Guernsey (.gg): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Dependencies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Dependencies
- alexchamberlain 2y ago
  Right, but confusingly, GB is the ISO 2 code for the United Kingdom, even though the United Kingdom is much bigger than Great Britain, where the GB abbreviation comes from.
  - anotherhue 2y ago
    Makes sense, also in keeping with the excessively complicated naming that thousands of years of dispute produces.
  - vidarh 2y ago
    Pet hate: Regularly running into dropdowns that list countries by name, but sort them by country code.