Memories of .us

#1

Post by sabas_ge » Wed, Nov 26, 2025, 1:36 PM UTC

Re: Memories of .us

#2

Post by jjmarr » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 7:59 PM UTC

Subdivided geographic TLDs are still common in Ontario govts, such as gov.on.ca [1] and tdsb.on.ca for Toronto schools.[2] Both are still in common use.

[1] https://kagi.com/search?q=site%3Agov.on.ca&r=ca&sh=lUDz_I8Uq...

[2] https://kagi.com/search?q=site%3ATDSB.on.ca&r=ca&sh=jysEnEgZ...

Re: Memories of .us

#3

Post by throw0101c » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

jjmarr wrote: post #2

Subdivided geographic TLDs are still common in Ontario govts, such as gov.on.ca [1] and tdsb.on.ca for Toronto schools.[2] Both are still in common use. [1] https://kagi.com/search?q=site%3Agov.on.ca&r=ca&sh=lUDz_I8Uq... [2] https://kagi.com/search?q=site%3ATDSB.on.ca&r=ca&sh=jysEnEgZ...

For dot-ca, it (used to be) historically mandated that you had to use the 'closest' geographic locale for your domain, which is how we got https://transit.toronto.on.ca (which now goes to https://transittoronto.ca).

At some point CIRA (the non-profit that now runs .ca) stopped making that a requirement.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ca

There are still rules on who gets priority on names: toronto.ca is the government but toronto.com is a news organization; ditto for canada.ca and canada.com; ontario.ca versus ontario.com; etc.

The three/four-level domains are now generally grandfathered.

Re: Memories of .us

#4

Post by QuantumNomad_ » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 8:34 PM UTC

jjmarr wrote: post #2

Subdivided geographic TLDs are still common in Ontario govts, such as gov.on.ca [1] and tdsb.on.ca for Toronto schools.[2] Both are still in common use. [1] https://kagi.com/search?q=site%3Agov.on.ca&r=ca&sh=lUDz_I8Uq... [2] https://kagi.com/search?q=site%3ATDSB.on.ca&r=ca&sh=jysEnEgZ...

In Norway we have kommune.no for municipalities.

For example:

- Oslo https://www.oslo.kommune.no/ the largest municipality in terms of population, and home of Oslo the capital of Norway

- Utsira http://www.utsira.kommune.no/ the smallest municipality in terms of population with just 217 people per 2025.

- Nordkapp https://www.nordkapp.kommune.no/ home of the famous Nordkapp (North Cape)

And there is vgs.no for High Schools.

For example:

- Elvebakken videregående skole https://elvebakken.vgs.no/

- Nydalen videregående skole https://nydalen.vgs.no/

- Foss videregående skole https://foss.vgs.no/

These two and some others are called category domains and are managed by Norid, who also run the .no registry as a whole.

https://www.norid.no/en/om-domenenavn/regelverk-for-no/#4.-A...

Re: Memories of .us

#5

Post by kraptv » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 8:36 PM UTC

I love the old interent. I'll confess I have three locality domains and they are wonderful.

I'll confess I have successfully registered a locality domain this year (2025) and it was a little bit fun to go through the weird hoops to get this new domain registered.

I'm also working on/helping out a registrar whose owned died and his widow is resolving what to do with the non-profit.

A related quaint couple of blogs[1][2] if you're feeling nostalgic and motivated to register your own:

[1] https://sleepless.seattle.wa.us/2022-07-01-110449/

[2] http://nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us/locality.html

Re: Memories of .us

#6

Post by johnplatte » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 9:07 PM UTC

.su is available for registration, I'm not sure what the "in a limited way" is about. In Russia it's used to communicate old-schoolness, approximately.

Re: Memories of .us

#7

Post by ravetcofx » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 9:40 PM UTC

QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #4

jjmarr wrote: post #2

Subdivided geographic TLDs are still common in Ontario govts, such as gov.on.ca [1] and tdsb.on.ca for Toronto schools.[2] Both are still in common use. [1] https://kagi.com/search?q=site%3Agov.on.ca&r=ca&sh=lUDz_I8Uq... [2] https://kagi.com/search?q=site%3ATDSB.on.ca&r=ca&sh=jysEnEgZ...

In Norway we have kommune.no for municipalities. For example: - Oslo https://www.oslo.kommune.no/ the largest municipality in terms of population, and home of Oslo the capital of Norway - Utsira http://www.utsira.kommune.no/ the smallest municipality in terms of population with just 217 people per 2025. - Nordkapp https://www.nordkapp.kommune.no/ home of the famous Nordkapp (North Cape) And there is vgs.no for High S…

country wide like that must be a bit of a pain for local web admins for those municipalities to make changes through the bureaucracy of government DNS/registrar keyholders. I have a friend who works for a university web services and adding any subdomain takes months to a year+ with committees, boards, meetings and approvals they have to go through first

Re: Memories of .us

#8

Post by rasengan » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 9:49 PM UTC

Some IRC networks still use naming as such like "server.state.country.dal.net."

Re: Memories of .us

#9

Post by morcus » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 9:55 PM UTC

> Technically speaking, the top of the DNS tree, the DNS root, is a null label referenced by a trailing dot. It's analogous to the '/' at the beginning of POSIX file paths. "gatech.edu" really should be written as "gatech.edu." to make it absolute rather than relative

I have never seen this, but I just tried it and it seems like browsers, even today will happily handle such URLs.

Neat!

Re: Memories of .us

#10

Post by lxgr » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 9:59 PM UTC

morcus wrote: post #9

> Technically speaking, the top of the DNS tree, the DNS root, is a null label referenced by a trailing dot. It's analogous to the '/' at the beginning of POSIX file paths. "gatech.edu" really should be written as "gatech.edu." to make it absolute rather than relative I have never seen this, but I just tried it and it seems like browsers, even today will happily handle such URLs. Neat!

Presumably they just split the “domain” part out of the URL on // and the first / and feed that into getaddrinfo, with the OS and DNS doing the rest?

But I agree, it’s definitely neat :)