Домен верхнего уровня .uk: история и особенности использования

Internet country code top level domain for the United Kingdom
uk is the Internet country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the United Kingdom. It was first registered in July 1985, seven months after the original generic top level domains such as com and the first country code after us. as of 2021, it is the fifth most popular top level domain worldwide (after com, cn, de and net), with over 10 million registrations. uk has used OpenDNSSEC since March 2010.

In October 1984, RFC 920 set out the creation of ccTLDs using country codes derived from the corresponding two letter code in the ISO 3166 1 list. "GB" is the UK's ISO 3166 country code. However, the UK academic network Name Registration Scheme, JANET NRS, had defined "UK" as the top level domain a few months before the compilation of the ISO derived list. Consequently, uk was chosen and registered on 24 July 1985. gb was reserved but never widely used and it is no longer possible to register domains under that ccTLD. As with other ccTLDs in the early days it was originally delegated by Jon Postel to a "trusted person" to manage. Andrew McDowell at UCL was assigned uk, the first country code delegation. (Ministry of Defence), parliament. uk (Parliament), bl. uk and british library. uk (the British Library), nls. uk (the National Library of Scotland), nhs. uk (The National Health Service), and jet. uk (UKAEA as operator of the Joint European Torus experimental fusion tokamak). Currently management of the uk domain name is delegated by IANA to Nominet UK. It is possible to directly register a domain name with Nominet UK at £80+VAT as of 2021, but it is faster and cheaper to do it via a Nominet accredited domain registrar costing in the region of £10+VAT in 2021.

New registrations directly under uk have been accepted by Nominet since 10 June 2014 08:00 BST; however, there was a reservation period for existing customers who already had a co. uk, org. uk, me. uk, net. uk, ltd. uk or plc. uk domain to claim the corresponding uk domain, which ran until 06:00 BST on 25 June 2019. If a domain was registered before 23:59 UTC on 28 October 2013 the user had the rights to the equivalent uk domain (providing there was no other corresponding co. uk, org. uk, me. uk, ltd. uk, plc. uk or net. uk registered).

. ac. uk – academic (tertiary education, further education colleges, research establishments (such as the British Antarctic Survey) and learned societies)
bl. uk – used solely for the British Library
co. uk – commercial entities and purposes (the most popular second level domain for uk, majority of uk registrations are on co. uk domain)
gov. uk – government (central, devolved and local) judiciary. uk – judiciary of England and Wales
ltd. uk – limited companies
me. uk – personal names
mod. uk – armed forces and Ministry of Defence establishments and systems
net. uk – ISPs and network companies (unlike net, use is restricted to these users)
nhs. uk – NHS organisations and trusts
nic. uk – network use only (reserved exclusively for Nominet UK)
org. uk – not for profit entities
parliament. uk – Parliament of the United Kingdom and the devolved national parliaments and assemblies
plc. uk – public limited companies
police. uk – police forces in the UK and law enforcement organisations. rct. uk – used solely for the Royal Collection Trust
royal. uk – used solely for the royal family website
sch. uk – local education authorities, schools, primary and secondary education, community education
ukaea. uk – used solely for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
co. uk, ltd. uk, me. uk, net. uk, nic. uk, org. uk, plc. uk and sch. uk are managed by Nominet UK and except for nic. uk are available for registration by the public (though they all carry various degrees of restrictions). Other second level domains are managed by various government agencies, and generally more strongly controlled.

. govt. uk – former government domain, now deleted and replaced by gov. uk. orgn. uk – former non profit organisations domain, now deleted and replaced by org. uk. lea. uk – local education authorities; since fallen out of use. mil. uk – the Ministry of Defence have always used mod. uk for their external domain, but use mil. uk on their private network. mil. uk exists only as a CNAME for mod. uk in the uk zone file.

. cym. uk – A second level domain for Wales; it did not have support of the Welsh Internet community, with a cym domain being proposed, though later rejected. Top level domains of cymru and wales have since been delegated to the root in 2014.
scot. uk – A second level domain for Scotland; it was rejected by Nominet. A top level domain of scot approved on 10 June 2014 and been delegated to the root since 13 June 2014.
sco. uk – A second level domain for Scotland. soc. uk – proposed for Social and Society use.

Allocations are on a strict first come, first served basis to qualified applicants. There are no territorial restrictions: applicants need not have any connection to the UK other than those outlined below for ltd. uk and other restricted domains. co. uk is by far the most used of the domains, followed by org. uk then me. uk. plc. uk and ltd. uk are only rarely used. The number of new registrations for each of the different uk domains on a month by month basis can be seen on the Nominet UK website. The intended restriction of co. uk to companies is purely nominal; in practice it is open to any and all applicants. Likewise, whilst org. uk is for organisations, there are no restrictions on registering domains. While me. uk originally had no restrictions on registrants it has since been tightened up to require registrants to be natural persons (i. e. not companies, etc.). However, registrants in ltd. uk must be, and remain, private limited companies incorporated under the UK Companies Acts. In addition, names can only be registered if they correspond (in accordance with the algorithm in the rules of registration) with the exact company name, as recorded at the companies registry at Companies House. The same conditions apply for public limited companies which wish to use a plc. uk domain name. Neither of these domains is widely used. net. uk is more open, but the Nominet regulations still mean that a registrant must be an ISP, or a similar body, and that the domain is not used for providing services to end users. nic. uk, however, is limited solely to domains operated by Nominet. ac. uk domains are intended for the use of higher education institutions and further education colleges, and are also used by some academic support bodies such as the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service public research establishments, and learned societies such as the Royal Society. Primary and secondary education uses sch. uk.

Unusually, sch. uk domains are allocated at the fourth level, with the third level being taken up by the name of the local authority (LA, previously LEA or local education authority) e. g. schoolname. leaname. sch. uk. For example, the Little Ilford School in Newham has the domain name littleilford. newham. sch. uk and the West Exe School in Exeter, Devon has the domain name westexe. devon. sch. uk. Previously applications were made in the normal way, but after Nominet came to an arrangement with the education authorities, one domain per school was issued automatically. Those that had already used another domain were still given one and were able to redirect it to their main domain.

. ac – ccTLD for Ascension Island
ai – ccTLD for Anguilla
aq – ccTLD for Antarctica (including the British Antarctic Territory)
bm – ccTLD for Bermuda
fk – ccTLD for the Falkland Islands
gb – former ccTLD for the United Kingdom
gg – ccTLD for the Bailiwick of Guernsey
gi – ccTLD for Gibraltar
gs – ccTLD for South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
im – ccTLD for the Isle of Man
io – ccTLD for the British Indian Ocean Territory
je – ccTLD for the Bailiwick of Jersey
ky – ccTLD for the Cayman Islands
ms – ccTLD for Montserrat
pn – ccTLD for the Pitcairn Islands
sh – ccTLD for Saint Helena
tc – ccTLD for the Turks and Caicos Islands
vg – ccTLD for the British Virgin Islands

. cymru – GeoTLD for Wales (Welsh: Cymru), UK
london – GeoTLD for London, England, UK
scot – GeoTLD for Scotland, UK
wales – GeoTLD for Wales, UK