.au
Encyclopedia
.au is the Internet
country code
top-level domain
(ccTLD) for Australia
.
, 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 1 July 2002. Since this new regime, any registration has to be ordered via a registrar
.
(auDA). It is a not-for-profit organisation whose membership is derived from Internet organisations, 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.
In 2008 auDA changed its longstanding policy and allowed changes in ownership of .au domains.[1] Although the secondary market was initially slow to take off there have recently been signs of increasing maturity in the .au aftermarket culminating in the record $125,500 sale of investmentproperty.com.au.
allocation policy to that used in other countries such as the United Kingdom
and New Zealand
.
CGDNs use the state or territory
's common abbreviation as the second level of the domain. For example, a community based in Victoria would receive a domain ending in .vic.au, a Northern Territory community would use .nt.au, and so on. The third level of the domain must be an addressable locality within that state or territory, of the form townname.vic.au. Where a name is duplicated within a state - for instance, between a smaller town, and a suburb of a larger town or city - the locality name may be suffixed with the name of the local government area, town or city to which it is associated (e.g. suburbname-cityname.vic.au).
Holders of CGDNs must be "a legally registered, not-for-profit entity; and [...] representative of the local community for the purpose of holding the domain name licence." In particular, commercial entities and local governments are not permitted to hold a CGDN in their own right; they are however permitted to hold membership in such entities set up to hold a CGDN.
As of November 2009, the auCD site claims 91 active CGDNs across Australia, with a further 115 either approved or awaiting approval.
In addition, a number of temporary CGDN sites were activated for communities affected by the Victorian Black Saturday bushfires of February 2009, run either by "community members" or auCD itself (as a waiver of usual policy). These domains are due to expire at the end of June 2010, unless transferred to an eligible holder.
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. However, after a change of internet services in Queensland
State Schools their domain names were changed from schoolname.qld.edu.au to schoolname.eq.edu.au. This is not the case for private schools in Queensland
. Often, domains can even contain a fourth level: for instance, a NSW public school might have the domain schoolname.schools.nsw.edu.au.
auDA has delegated responsibility of the .edu.au domain to Australian Information and Communications Technology in Education Committee (AICTEC), which formed a specialist sub-committee, .edu.au Domain Administration Committee (eDAC). Educational institutions may register an edu.au domain name at: http://www.domainname.edu.au/
Tertiary institutions are typically exempt from requiring state-based distinctions. For example Edith Cowan University
in Western Australia has a domain of ecu.edu.au rather than ecu.wa.edu.au, Monash University
in Victoria uses monash.edu.au rather than monash.vic.edu.au. This difference can be associated with states having responsibility for primary and secondary education while the Commonwealth has responsibility for tertiary education - tertiary institutions often having a presence in multiple states.
for some, no new registrations are accepted.
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.
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
country code
Country code
Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The best known of these is ISO 3166-1...
top-level domain
Top-level domain
A top-level domain is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last label of a...
(ccTLD) for Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
.
History
The domain name was originally allocated by Jon PostelJon Postel
Jonathan Bruce Postel was an American computer scientist who made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, particularly with respect to standards...
, operator of IANA
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority is the entity that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System , media types, and other Internet Protocol-related symbols and numbers...
to Kevin Robert Elz
Kevin Robert Elz
Kevin Robert Elz, often referred to in computing circles as Robert Elz, or simply kre, is a computer programmer and a pioneer in connecting Australia to the Internet, and more recently, in connecting Thailand.-Career:...
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
.au Domain Administration
.au Domain Administration is the manager of the .au domain, which is the country-code top-level domain for Australia. It is a not-for-profit organisation, whose membership is open to organisations or individuals who have an interest in Australian domain name matters.-Early History of .au:The...
to operate the domain. It obtained assent from ICANN
ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a non-profit corporation headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, United States, that was created on September 18, 1998, and incorporated on September 30, 1998 to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly...
in 2001, and commenced operating a new competitive regime for domain registration on 1 July 2002. Since this new regime, any registration has to be ordered via a registrar
Domain name registrar
A domain name registrar is an organization or commercial entity, accredited by both ICANN and generic top-level domain registry to sell gTLDs and/or by a country code top-level domain registry to sell ccTLDs; to manage the reservation of Internet domain names in accordance with the guidelines of...
.
Operation of .au
Oversight of .au is by .au Domain Administration.au Domain Administration
.au Domain Administration is the manager of the .au domain, which is the country-code top-level domain for Australia. It is a not-for-profit organisation, whose membership is open to organisations or individuals who have an interest in Australian domain name matters.-Early History of .au:The...
(auDA). It is a not-for-profit organisation whose membership is derived from Internet organisations, 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
Domain name registry
A domain name registry is a database of all domain names registered in a top-level domain. A registry operator, also called a network information center , is the part of the Domain Name System of the Internet that keeps the database of domain names, and generates the zone files which convert...
technical facility is tendered out by auDA. The operator from 2002 to 2006 for many of .au's second-level domains is AusRegistry
AusRegistry
AusRegistry is a Melbourne, Australia based company that specialises in domain name registry services.AusRegistry is the current Registry Operator and wholesale provider for all commercial .au domain names including .com.au and .net.au and the non-commercial domain names .edu.au and .gov.au.In...
.
The registry does not sell direct to the consumer, who must register and maintain their domain name via a domain name registrar
Domain name registrar
A domain name registrar is an organization or commercial entity, accredited by both ICANN and generic top-level domain registry to sell gTLDs and/or by a country code top-level domain registry to sell ccTLDs; to manage the reservation of Internet domain names in accordance with the guidelines of...
. After the industry's liberalisation in 2002, there is an active competitive market in registrars with a variety of prices and services.
In 2008 auDA changed its longstanding policy and allowed changes in ownership of .au domains.[1] Although the secondary market was initially slow to take off there have recently been signs of increasing maturity in the .au aftermarket culminating in the record $125,500 sale of investmentproperty.com.au.
Registration
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 similarallocation policy to that used in other countries such as the United Kingdom
.uk
.uk is the Internet country code top-level domain for the United Kingdom. , it is the fourth most popular top-level domain worldwide , with over 9.5 million registrations....
and New Zealand
.nz
.nz is the Internet country code top-level domain for New Zealand. It is administered by InternetNZ through its subsidiary, NZ Registry Services, with oversight and dispute resolution handled by the Domain Name Commission Ltd. Registrations are processed via authorised registrars...
.
Second-level domains
- .com.au - Commercial entities
- .net.au - Commercial entities (historically only ISPs, but the use has been broadened)
- .org.au - Associations and non-profit organisation (historically only for organisations that did not fit in other categories)
- .edu.au - Educational institutions (see Third-level domains, below)
- .gov.au - Governments and their departments (see Third-level domains, below)
- .csiro.au - CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation)
- .asn.au - Associations and non-profit organisations
- .id.au - Individuals (by real name or common alias)
Community geographic domain names
Introduced in 2004, "community geographic domain names" (CGDNs) are intended to be used for "community websites that reflect community interests such as local business, tourism, historical information, culture, sporting groups, local events and news" of a local community. These domains are managed by the .au Community Domains Trust (auCD) on behalf of auDA. The funding of auCD was provided from a ballot of locality names in the .com.au and .net.au domain spaces; previously, any locality with a postcode had been restricted from being registered as a commercial domain name.CGDNs use the state or territory
States and territories of Australia
The Commonwealth of Australia is a union of six states and various territories. The Australian mainland is made up of five states and three territories, with the sixth state of Tasmania being made up of islands. In addition there are six island territories, known as external territories, and a...
's common abbreviation as the second level of the domain. For example, a community based in Victoria would receive a domain ending in .vic.au, a Northern Territory community would use .nt.au, and so on. The third level of the domain must be an addressable locality within that state or territory, of the form townname.vic.au. Where a name is duplicated within a state - for instance, between a smaller town, and a suburb of a larger town or city - the locality name may be suffixed with the name of the local government area, town or city to which it is associated (e.g. suburbname-cityname.vic.au).
Holders of CGDNs must be "a legally registered, not-for-profit entity; and [...] representative of the local community for the purpose of holding the domain name licence." In particular, commercial entities and local governments are not permitted to hold a CGDN in their own right; they are however permitted to hold membership in such entities set up to hold a CGDN.
As of November 2009, the auCD site claims 91 active CGDNs across Australia, with a further 115 either approved or awaiting approval.
In addition, a number of temporary CGDN sites were activated for communities affected by the Victorian Black Saturday bushfires of February 2009, run either by "community members" or auCD itself (as a waiver of usual policy). These domains are due to expire at the end of June 2010, unless transferred to an eligible holder.
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
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
would register schoolname.wa.edu.au, whereas a New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
government department would use deptname.nsw.gov.au. Similarly, replacing the bold part of these domains, Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
would use .vic, Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
would use .qld, South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
would use .sa, Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
would use .tas, Northern Territory
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
would use .nt and the Australian Capital Territory
Australian Capital Territory
The Australian Capital Territory, often abbreviated ACT, is the capital territory of the Commonwealth of Australia and is the smallest self-governing internal territory...
would use .act. However, after a change of internet services in Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
State Schools their domain names were changed from schoolname.qld.edu.au to schoolname.eq.edu.au. This is not the case for private schools in Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
. Often, domains can even contain a fourth level: for instance, a NSW public school might have the domain schoolname.schools.nsw.edu.au.
auDA has delegated responsibility of the .edu.au domain to Australian Information and Communications Technology in Education Committee (AICTEC), which formed a specialist sub-committee, .edu.au Domain Administration Committee (eDAC). Educational institutions may register an edu.au domain name at: http://www.domainname.edu.au/
Tertiary institutions are typically exempt from requiring state-based distinctions. For example Edith Cowan University
Edith Cowan University
Edith Cowan University is located in Perth, Western Australia. It was named after the first woman to be elected to an Australian Parliament, Edith Cowan, and is the only Australian university named after a woman....
in Western Australia has a domain of ecu.edu.au rather than ecu.wa.edu.au, Monash University
Monash University
Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....
in Victoria uses monash.edu.au rather than monash.vic.edu.au. This difference can be associated with states having responsibility for primary and secondary education while the Commonwealth has responsibility for tertiary education - tertiary institutions often having a presence in multiple states.
Historic second-level domains
Some second-level domain names are no longer actively used. Whilst registrations are grand-fatheredGrandfather clause
Grandfather clause is a legal term used to describe a situation in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations, while a new rule will apply to all future situations. It is often used as a verb: to grandfather means to grant such an exemption...
for some, no new registrations are accepted.
- .archie.au - Host of the ArchieArchie search engineArchie is a tool for indexing FTP archives, allowing people to find specific files. It is considered to be the first Internet search engine. The original implementation was written in 1990 by Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan, and J...
information service of the early 1990s. Has since been deleted - .conf.au - Conferences and other short-lived events, now only exists for linux.conf.auLinux.conf.aulinux.conf.au is Australasia's regional Linux and Open Source conference. It is a roaming conference, held in a different city every year, coordinated by Linux Australia and organised by local volunteers....
. - .gw.au - Gateways and miscellaneous AARNetAARNetAARNet or Australian Academic and Research Network offers Internet services to the Australian education and research communities and their research partners.AARNet is a not-for-profit company limited by shares...
routing equipment. Has since been deleted - .info.au - General information
- .otc.au - A mapping domain for X.400X.400X.400 is a suite of ITU-T Recommendations that define standards for Data Communication Networks for Message Handling Systems — more commonly known as "email"....
addresses; was obsoleted by telememo.au. Has since been deleted - .oz.au - Historical domain name for Australian sites. Australia's original top-level domain for use in the store-and-forward Internet messaging system MHSnetMHSnetMHSnet is a store-and-forward messaging system for wide area networks. MHSnet and its precursor, SUN3, were used to implement the Australian Computer Science network ....
was .oz. The top-level domain later officially became .au and those domains in .oz were moved to .oz.au. As of April 2011, many subdomains under cs.mu.oz.au and ee.mu.oz.au are still in use for SSH access to servers within the CSSE and EEE departments of the University of Melbourne. - .telememo.au - A mapping domain for X.400X.400X.400 is a suite of ITU-T Recommendations that define standards for Data Communication Networks for Message Handling Systems — more commonly known as "email"....
addresses. Has since been deleted
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.cc.cc is the Internet country code top-level domain for Cocos Islands, an Australian territory. It is administered by VeriSign through a subsidiary company eNIC, which promotes it for international registration as "the next .com"; .cc was originally assigned in October 1997 to eNIC Corporation of...
- Cocos (Keeling) IslandsCocos (Keeling) IslandsThe Territory of the Cocos Islands, also called Cocos Islands and Keeling Islands, is a territory of Australia, located in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Christmas Island and approximately midway between Australia and Sri Lanka.... - .cx.cx.cx is the country code top-level domain for Christmas Island. It is administered by Christmas Island Internet Administration , a community-owned non-profit company which also provides Internet service to the island's residents....
- Christmas IslandChristmas IslandThe Territory of Christmas Island is a territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean. It is located northwest of the Western Australian city of Perth, south of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, and ENE of the Cocos Islands.... - .hm.hm.hm is the Internet country code top-level domain for the Heard and McDonald Islands, an uninhabited territory of Australia.There has been limited use of this top-level domain, most of it unrelated in any way to the Heard and McDonald Islands. For instance, my.hm issues firstname.lastname.hm in a...
- Heard and McDonald IslandsHeard Island and McDonald IslandsThe Heard Island and McDonald Islands are an Australian external territory and volcanic group of barren Antarctic islands, about two-thirds of the way from Madagascar to Antarctica. The group's overall size is in area and it has of coastline... - .nf.nf.nf is the Internet country code top-level domain for Norfolk Island. While there is no rule requiring a local presence to register domains in this TLD, the pricing is significantly higher than most other domains, which has discouraged its use...
- Norfolk IslandNorfolk IslandNorfolk Island is a small island in the Pacific Ocean located between Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia. The island is part of the Commonwealth of Australia, but it enjoys a large degree of self-governance...
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
VeriSign
Verisign, Inc. is an American company based in Dulles, Virginia that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the .com, .net, and .name generic top-level domains and the .cc and .tv country-code...
. .hm represents a nature preserve with no human inhabitants.