A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country (a sovereign state or a dependent territory).
All ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs. Creation and delegation of ccTLDs is performed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) as described in RFC 1591, corresponding to ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes with few exceptions.
Delegation & Management
The IANA (currently contracted to ICANN) is responsible for determining an appropriate trustee for each ccTLD. Administration and control is then delegated to that trustee, which is responsible for the policies and operation of the domain. The current delegation can be determined from IANA’s list of ccTLDs. Individual ccTLDs may have varying requirements and fees for registering subdomains. There may be a local presence requirement (for instance, citizenship or other connection to the ccTLD), as for example the Canadian (ca) and German (de) domains, or registration may be open.
Unconventional Usage
Lenient registration restrictions on certain ccTLDs have resulted in domain names like I.am, tip.it, start.at and go.to. Other variations of ccTLD usage have been called domain hacks, where the Second-level domain and ccTLD are used together to form one word or one title. This has resulted in domains like blo.gs of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (gs), del.icio.us of United States of America (us), and cr.yp.to of Tonga (to). (Non country code TLDs have also been used, like inter.net and filecabi.net which uses the .net gTLD, probably the first domain hack ever.)
Popularity: unranked
