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Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

cambus.net

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Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#41

Post by 0x0 »

smhenderson wrote: post #29
pimlottc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure every possible two letter combination was taken before that policy came out. There used to be an old site that visualized the two- and three-letter domain name space as two- and three-dimensional grids. It was neat seeing the pixels fill in over time.

Looks like you're right - from Wikipedia: Two-letter .com domain names were never reserved. It was possible for anyone to register them in the very early years of the Internet (from 1985 to 1998). The first company to own an active Two Letter Domain is Hewlett-Packard. Since 1998 all permutations of the 26 × 26 = 676 .com domains have been registered and (barring the very unlikely event of a lapse in registration) th…

Since you can also use numbers, shouldn't that read "all permutations (...) 36x36 = 1296 .com domains" ?

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#42

Post by joezydeco »

jghn wrote: post #31
chrisacky wrote: post #27

What was registration fees back then? Why wouldn't people just squat on a bunch of two/three letter domains? Was it prohibitively difficult to register..

There was some nominal fee, it wasn't much. Frankly the idea of squatting on names and such just didn't enter people's minds until the early 90s.

At least through 1992-1993 the registration was free, all it took was an email to a bot at InterNIC that handled the form.

I remember having a two-digit handle with InterNIC, too bad that wasn't worth anything. =)

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#43

Post by icedchai »

jghn wrote: post #31
chrisacky wrote: post #27

What was registration fees back then? Why wouldn't people just squat on a bunch of two/three letter domains? Was it prohibitively difficult to register..

There was some nominal fee, it wasn't much. Frankly the idea of squatting on names and such just didn't enter people's minds until the early 90s.

There was actually no registration fee at all until 1997. I registered several domains that were "free" and remember having to pay $99/year for them at one point...

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#44

Post by jedberg »

awb wrote: post #19

Were original registrations done by mail? I see 5 domains registered on Aug. 5th, 1986, then no more domains for another month. And 12 on Dec. 11 1986, then again another month with no registrations.

I believe they were done by email or online form (edited to be more accurate), but were all verified by a human and entered into the database manually. So you had to wait for the processing run to get your domain in, which was at the whims of the person who had to process them.

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#45

Post by jdwithit »

chrisacky wrote: post #27

What was registration fees back then? Why wouldn't people just squat on a bunch of two/three letter domains? Was it prohibitively difficult to register..

Piling on what others have said, the Web wasn't even a thing until the early 90's. There was minimal commercial value in a domain name at that point, so no incentive to squat on it and try to extort money. What did your average business or person care about a domain name in 1987? It wasn't one of the most critical pieces of your brand, as it is now.

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#47

Post by ghaff »

ant6n wrote: post #30
chrisacky wrote: post #27

What was registration fees back then? Why wouldn't people just squat on a bunch of two/three letter domains? Was it prohibitively difficult to register..

Nobody saw a value in domain names. People didn't think we'd run out of domains. People didn't think that the internet would become mainstream, or that it would continue to exist in that form for a long time.

For that matter, /8 blocks were given out, if not quite like candy, certainly with considerable abandon. A fair number of the early universities and companies who registered ended up with complete /8 blocks all to themselves.

[EDIT: Duh. Of course, it was actually Class A blocks at the time.]

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#48

Post by falcor84 »

jedberg wrote: post #44
awb wrote: post #19

Were original registrations done by mail? I see 5 domains registered on Aug. 5th, 1986, then no more domains for another month. And 12 on Dec. 11 1986, then again another month with no registrations.

I believe they were done by email or online form (edited to be more accurate), but were all verified by a human and entered into the database manually. So you had to wait for the processing run to get your domain in, which was at the whims of the person who had to process them.

>...web form...

Note that this actually precedes the web by several years

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#49

Post by chrissnell »

awb wrote: post #19

Were original registrations done by mail? I see 5 domains registered on Aug. 5th, 1986, then no more domains for another month. And 12 on Dec. 11 1986, then again another month with no registrations.

Yes, they were done by email and were a massive pain in the ass. There was a text file template you'd fill out and email it to ISI. The domains were free but you had to have working nameservers for them and that was the tough part. As a young undergrad in 1993, I wanted to register a few but couldn't find anyone to serve DNS for me. The Vanderbilt IT staff was unwilling to help and I didn't know anybody else until I met my buddy Bob Collie (who owns bob.net). I ended up registering cjs.com, grateful.com, eleet.com and some others but let most of them expire when I couldn't afford the annual $70 per-domain fee that Network Solutions started charging after they took over from ISI. The only one I kept was bikeworld.com, which I had registered for my dad's bike shop. He still uses it today.
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