European domains: United Kingdom (.uk)

Restrictions: British domains, None for .co.uk and .org.uk; other subdomains have differing restrictions

.uk is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United Kingdom. As of July 2008, it is the fifth most popular top-level domain worldwide (after .com, .cn, .de and .net), with over 7 million registrations.

The use of .uk rather than .gb for the top-level domain is due to its pre-existing use in the (now obsolete) JANET Name Registration Scheme in which the order of address components were reversed. .uk was made available in DNS to simplify the translation to and from these addresses. There were plans for eventual transition to .gb to accord with correct usage, but this never occurred; the use of .uk is now entrenched as it is impossible to register a .gb domain.

As with other ccTLDs in the early days it was originally delegated to an individual by Jon Postel. In time, it passed to Dr Willie Black at the UK Education and Research Networking Association. Originally, Domain requests were emailed, manually screened by and then forwarded to the UK Naming Committee before being processed by UKERNA. Membership of this Committee was restricted to a group of high-end ISPs who were part of a formal peering arrangement.

The Naming Committee was organised as a mailing list to which all proposed names were circulated. The members would consider the proposals under a ruleset that insisted that all domain names should be very close if not identical to a registered busiess name of the registrant. Members of the Naming Committee could object to any name, and if a small number of objections were received, the name was refused. In addition to the 'matching' requirement, there was also a restriction that any company should only have a single domain name.

By the mid-1990s the growth of the Internet, and particularly the advent of the World Wide Web was pushing requests for domain name registrations up to levels that were not manageable by a group of part-time voluntary managers. Oliver Smith of DemonInternet forced the issue by providing the committee with a series of automated tools, called the "automaton", which formalised and automated the naming process end to end. This allowed many more registrations to be processed far more reliably and rapidly, and inspired individuals such as Ivan Pope to explore more entrepreneurial approaches to registration.

Various plans were put forward for the possible management of the domain, mostly Internet service providers seeking to stake a claim, each of which were naturally unacceptable to the rest of the committee. In response to this Dr Black, as the .uk Nae, stepped up with a bold proposal for a not-for-profit commercial entity to deal with the .uk domain properly. Commercial interests initially balked at this, but with widespread support Nominet UK was formed to be the .uk Network Information Centre, a role which it continues to this day.

The general form of the rules (i.e. which domains can be registered and whether to allow second level domains) was set by the Naming Committee. Nominet has not made major changes to the rules, although it has introduced a new second level domain .me.uk for individuals.

It is prohibited to register a domain name directly under .uk (such as internet.uk) and a second-level domain must be used (such as internet.co.uk).

However, some domains delegated before the creation of Nominet UK remain. Examples include 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). No new 'normal' registrations at the second level are accepted although there is a system for allocating new second level domains to expand the capacity of the system. Such allocations are rarely made.

It is possible to directly register a domain name with Nominet UK but it is faster and cheaper to do it via a Nominet tag holder.

Background Information :

Population

2007 estimate 60,975,000 (22nd) - 2001 census 58,789,194 - Density 246/km2 (48th) 637/sq mi

GDP

(PPP) 2007 estimate - Total $2.23 trillion (6th) - Per capita $36,570 (14th)

National Anthem

"God Save the Queen"

Area

Total 244,820 km2 (79th) 94,526 sq mi - Water (%) 1.34

International Dialling Code

44

Currency

Pound sterling (GBP)

Population type

(2001) 92.1% White, 4.0% South Asian, 2.0% Black, 1.2% Mixed Race, 0.80% East Asian and Other

Government

Parliamentary constitutional monarchy - Monarch Queen Elizabeth II - Prime Minister Gordon Brown MP LegislatureParliament - Upper House House of Lords - Lower House House of Commons Formation - Acts of Union 1707 1 May 1707 - Act of Union 1800 1 January 1801 - Anglo-Irish Treaty 12 April 1922 EU

Language

English Recognised regional languages Welsh, Irish, Ulster Scots, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish

Motto

: "Dieu et mon droit" (French) "God and my right"

Time Zone

GMT (UTC+0) - Summer (DST) BST (UTC+1). The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain, is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning Great Britain, the notheast part of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border, sharing it with the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea. The largest island, Great Britain, is linked to France by the Channel Tunnel.

The United Kingdom is a unitary state consisting of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is governed by a parliamentary system with its seat of government in London, the capital, but with three devolved national administations in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland respectively. The UK is a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as the head of state. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are Crown Dependencies and not part of the UK, but form a federacy with it. The UK has fourteen overseas territories, all remnats of the British Empire, which at its height encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface, the largest empire in history. British influence can continue to be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. Queen Elizabeth II remains the head of the Commonwealth of Nations and head of state of each of the Commonwealth realms.

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