Who look after your domain name?

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is responsible for managing and coordinating the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure that every address is unique and that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses.

ICANN is a California non-profit corporation that was created on September 18, 1998 in order to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. Government by other organizations, notably IANA. The technical work of ICANN is referred to as the IANA function

ICANN's role is very limited, and it is not responsible for many issues associated with the Internet, such as financial transactions, Internet content control, spam (unsolicited commercial email), Internet gambling, or data protection and privacy.

There are two types of top-level domains, generic and country code, plus a special top-level domain (.arpa) for Internet infrastructure. Generic domains were created for use by the Internet public, while country code domains were created to be used by individual countries as they deemed necessary.

Sponsored gTLD includes .aero, .cat, .coop, .jobs, .mobi, .museum and .travel. Un-sponsored gTLD includes the more familiar .biz, .com, .info, .name, .net, .org and .pro. Registrations in the domains listed above may be made through dozens of competitive registrars.

There are domains that are exclusive to US government and between governments. The US exclusive domains are .gov, .edu and .mil. The .int domain is used only for registering organizations established by international treaties between governments.