General Information
Internet domain names are defined as names that define the Internet Protocol address used to determine the address of computers or websites on the Internet.
Domain names have a hierarchical structure. In domain names, the sections separated by dots have an increasing order of importance from left to right. In the domain name www.btk.gov.tr, the rightmost section “.tr” is the TLD (Top Level Domain-First Level Domain Name), the one to its left “gov” is the SLD (Second Level Domain-Second Level Domain Name), and the middle “btk” is the Third Level Domain (Third Level Domain Name). First level domain names are divided into two categories within themselves:
- Generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) and
- Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD).
Generic Top Level Domains are domain names that group domain names under a specific purpose, carry no geographic meaning, consist of three or more characters, and end with extensions such as “com, net, org, gov, edu, mil, int”. These extensions have been in use since they were added to the domain name system in 1984.
Country Code Top Level Domains are domain names that represent a country, a territory, or a geographic region and end with two-letter abbreviations defined in the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 3166 standard. For example, our country’s code is “.tr”, France’s is “.fr”, and Japan’s is “.jp”. The addition of country code top level domains to the domain name system began in the first half of the 1980s.
