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

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

#111

Post by seandougall »

cozzyd wrote: post #106
kps wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe Wikipedia. The fourth IETF proceedings lists 90 .edu domains registered as of July 10, 1986. Of those, 18 are still currently registered but are not in Wikipedia's list: buffalo.edu colgate.edu du.edu houston.edu lehigh.edu merit.edu mosis.edu riacs.edu sdsu.edu sunysb.edu tmc.edu ucar.edu uchicago.edu uiowa.edu umb.edu uoregon.edu villanova.edu vt.edu A further 7 are no longer registered: mich-state.…

Yeah, it must be based on querying whois, but for example, whois shows that uchicago.edu was registered in 1991 and northwestern.edu was registered in 1999 (!!). I suppose there may have been some lapse in the registration or something...

Northwestern used to be nwu.edu, but they rebranded in 1999 (which happened to be my sophomore year there).

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

#112

Post by bartread »

rjsw wrote: post #24
verelo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we just took symbolics.com down. Doesn't load right now for me, i'm wondering how much traffic it normally sees.

The remains of real Symbolics are here [1]. [1] http://www.symbolics-dks.com/

Blimey. That is some early 90s web chic going on there, and it's odd that I still find it somewhat appealing.

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

#113

Post by mrbill »

chrissnell wrote: post #49
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…

Sup, Chris?

I hated having to use the InterNIC template when I was handling domain regs back at that place we were both involved with.

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

#114

Post by mrbill »

bena wrote: post #63
ghaff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.]

https://xkcd.com/195/ Maybe a little out of date by now, but still, you can get a feel for it. Apple, Ford, HP, DEC, Xerox, among others all have full /8 blocks.

Halliburton had 34.* and 134.132.* as of 2015 when I last worked there, but I looked a few months ago and they've sold off some of that /8 to Amazon and others.... A lot of places with /8s are fixing their wasteful allocations and making good money off of it.

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

#115

Post by lispm »

For the record: the first .com companies were mostly heavy AI/Lisp users:

Symbolics -> Lisp Machines, Lisp software

BBN -> Jericho Lisp Machine, BBN Lisp, various Lisp applications

Thinking Machines -> Connection Machine CM1, a massive parallel accelerator for Symbolics Lisp Machine, *Lisp

MCC -> had a network of 100+ Lisp Machines, developed Cyc, Orion (a Lisp OODB) and a Lisp-based CAD system - amongst others

Xerox -> Interlisp, Interlisp-D Lisp Machine

SRI -> AI research with lots Lisp applications

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

#116

Post by panzagl »

technofiend wrote: post #108
techwizrd wrote: post #92

My employer, MITRE, is known for being the first to register a .org TLD. It's a pretty neat bit of computing history.

Anecdotally they also chased after a consultancy using mitre.com and forced them to give up their domain. The founders had gone to MIT and Rice University and were in a completely different sector but MITRE didn't care.

MITRE's not really a consultancy, but I wouldn't call them a completely unrelated field. Mitre.com now belongs to the soccer ball company so they couldn't have been too tight-fisted with it.

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

#119

Post by jghn »

icedchai wrote: post #43
jghn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yeah, after I posted that I realized that what I was remembering was a lot of fuss that they were going to charge, although I could have sworn that was more like 94-95ish. I do remember thinking that the amount was such that it'd not impact large companies but an individual, such as poor college students like myself at the time, might find it onerous.
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