.au
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- This article covers the top-level domain name. For the audio format, see: Au file format.
.au is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Australia.
The domain name was originally allocated by Jon Postel, operator of IANA to Kevin Robert Elz of Melbourne University in 1986. After an approximately five year process in the 1990s, the Internet industry created a self regulatory body called .au Domain Administration to operate the domain. It obtained assent from ICANN in 2001, and commenced operating a new competitive regime for domain registration on July 1, 2002.
It is not possible to register directly in the second level of .au (such as mycompany.au). The naming rules for .au require registrations under second-level categories that describe a type of entity. .com.au, for example, is designed for commercial entities. This follows a similar allocation policy to that used in other countries such as the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
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Operation of .au
Oversight of .au is conducted by .au Domain Administration (auDA). It is a not-for-profit organisation whose membership is derived from Internet organisation, industry members and interested individuals. The organisation operates under the consent of the Australian government which has legislative power to decide the operators of electronic addressing in the country.
Policy for .au is devised by policy development panels. These panels are convened by auDA and combine public input with industry representation to derive policy.
The day-to-day operation of the .au registry technical facility is tendered out by auDA. The operator from 2002 to 2006 for many of .au's second-level domains is AusRegistry.
The registry does not sell direct to the consumer, who must register and maintain their domain name via a domain name registrar. After the industry's liberalisation in 2002, there is an active competitive market in registrars with a variety of prices and services.
Second-level domains
- .com.au - Commercial entities
- .net.au - Commercial entities (historically only ISPs, but the use has been broadened)
- .asn.au - Associations and non-profit organisations
- .org.au - Associations and non-profit organisation (historically only for organisations that did not fit in other categories)
- .id.au - Individuals
- .gov.au - Governments
- .edu.au - Educational Institutions
Third-level domains
The use of .gov.au and .edu.au is also split up into further state-based categories. State governments and schools use a domain name that reflect their locale, and these state-based third-level domains are managed independently by the states.
For example, a school in Western Australia would register schoolname.wa.edu.au, whereas a New South Wales government department would use deptname.nsw.gov.au. Similarly, replacing the bold part of these domains, Victoria would use .vic, Queensland would use .qld, South Australia would use .sa, Tasmania would use .tas, Northern Territory would use .nt and the Australian Capital Territory would use .act.
Historic second-level domains
Some second-level domain names are no longer actively used. Whilst registrations are grand-fathered, no new registrations are accepted.
- .archie.au - Host of the Archie information service of the early 1990s.
- .csiro.au - CSIRO (Australian Scientific Research Organisation)
- .conf.au - Conferences and other short-lived events
- .info.au - General information
- .oz.au - Historical domain name for Australian sites. Australia's original top-level domain for use in the store-and-forward Internet messaging system MHSnet was .oz. The top-level domain later officially became .au and those domains in .oz were moved to .oz.au.
- .telememo.au - A mapping domain for X.400 addresses
Other Australian domain names
.au is not the only top-level domain name assigned to Australia. Some Australian territories were for historical reasons also allocated top-level domains.
- .cc - Cocos (Keeling) Islands
- .cx - Christmas Island
- .hm - Heard and McDonald Islands
- .nf - Norfolk Island
As the appropriate authorities were late in recognising the need to manage these, most were registered by entrepreneurs for use as vanity domains unrelated to the locale they serve. .cc, for example, is now operated by VeriSign. .hm represents a nature preserve with no human inhabitants.