[olug] .net or.org addresses

[Christopher Cashell]

At Fri, 30 Aug 02, Unidentified Flying Banana Andrew, said:
> .org tlds aren't really reserved just for non-profit organizations. 
> Anyone can register one.  You just run the risk of having it taken away 
> if a real non-profit wants it (I think).  .net's are available to anyone.

Originally, .org domain names were intended (and reserved) for
non-profit organizations.  .net domain names were reserved for network
infrastructure organizations (ISP's and such), while .com was set aside
for business and commercial use (there's also .mil for the military,
.edu for education, and .int for a few special groups, but we'll skip
those).

However, there are currently no restrictions of any kind on who is
allowed to have any of the three original  generic top level domains
(gTLD).  There are also a few additional recent gTLD's you can use, such
as .info and .biz.  Both of those are currently unrestricted.  The only
way you can lose your domain name for any of these is through lack of
payment for your registration renewal fee, or to a trademark.

> The cheapest registrar I've found that also provides DNS hosting is 
> gandi.net, they run about 12.00 euros, or roughly 12 dollars american 
> per domain per year.  I've never had a problem with them that wasn't my 
> fault.

joker.com is a popular one too, as are numerous others.  I would *very*
strongly urge you to avoid NSI (Network Solutions), now Verisign.  Not
only do they over charge you, but they don't provide the same level of
services as their competitors do, and their interface is much more
limited than many others.

> You can search for unused domain names on a linux box by using the 
> command whois
> 
> whois einer.org
> 
> for example will print out all the DNS hosting info and contact info for 
> my domain.

You can also, with most recent whois clients, whois a base name, and
have it search various suffixes, or even wild cards.  For example, you
could whois:

'olug'   -  To see if olug.com, olug.org, or olug.net were available.
            (note that this usually doesn't check .info or .biz)
'olug*'  -  To see what domains are registered that start with 'olug'
            (note that this is frequently limited to a certain number of
            results.)

Good luck with your domains.

--
Christopher