.nato

.nato was a generic top-level domain (gTLD) intended for use by NATO ( North Atlantic Treaty Organization ). It only existed from 1988 to 1996.

history

The top-level domain was originally intended as a counterpart to the purely US-American .mil extension. According to RFC 920 of October 1984, it was permissible to introduce separate TLDs for so-called multi-organizations . In order not to have to assign a separate address to every international organization , the decision was made in November 1988 to introduce .int . This made .nato superfluous, which is why NATO no longer used the domain itself - the subdomain nato.int was registered instead . The top-level domain remained in the Domain Name System for a transitional period . Eventually it was no longer mentioned in RFC 1591 of March 1994 and its operation was completely shut down in July 1996.

This makes .nato the only generic domain that has ever been deleted. Regardless of the tendency to introduce new generic top-level domains , there are currently (as of January 2013) no plans to reactivate .nato in any form.

Web links

Successor .int IANA

Individual evidence

↑ The secret top-level domain. In: domain-right. June 1, 2000, accessed January 16, 2013 .

[1] The secret top-level domain. In: domain-right. June 1, 2000, accessed January 16, 2013 .