New Domain Name Extensions Coming by 2008

How many domain extensions do you know about ?
Most Popular are the Top level domains or TLDs . They are .com /.net/org etc. In all there are more than 200 TLDs,including the two letter extensions like .in used for country specific websites . Here .in stands for India.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet's system of unique identifiers. These include domain names (like .org, .museum and country codes like .UK), as well as the addresses used in a variety of Internet protocols. Computers use these identifiers to reach each other over the Internet. Careful management of these resources is vital to the Internet's operation, so ICANN's global stakeholders meet regularly to develop policies that ensure the Internet's ongoing security and stability.

According to the latest News from Reuters.com,

"
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages the Internet's domain-name address system, said on Friday it was on track to allow an expanded number of domain names next year.

ICANN officials, wrapping up a week-long meeting in Puerto Rico, said their goal was to have in place by next year a permanent process to allow for new, generic top-level domain names, as well as to begin "internationalizing" domain names.

"With the progress we've made is San Juan, we're on track for the new applications and approvals policy to be ready for the start of 2008 and the introduction of new TLDs by mid-year," said Dr. Paul Twomey, president and chief executive of ICANN.

The California-based non-profit organization oversaw two previous extensions of Internet space: the addition of seven TLDS, including .info and .name in 2000, and the addition of another six starting in 2004.

It recently denied a petition to include .xxx as a TLD to be used for pornographic Web sites.

The group is also working to expand the number of characters that can be used to create Internet addresses, currently limited to the 26 Roman characters, 10 numerals and the hyphen. This would allow the use of Arabic, Chinese and a multitude of other characters to be used in domain names. "

Read the full Story at Reuters