Besides the TLDs managed (or at least tracked) by IANA or ICANN, other independent groups have created, or had attempted to create, their own TLDs with varying technical specifications, functions, and outcomes.
Microsoft Windows Within Microsoft Windows there are some special purpose domain names that partially conflict with publicly assigned ones.
Internet Engineering Task Force proposals for local TLDs The Internet Engineering Task Force (
IETF) has submitted several
requests for comments on TLDs that could be used to represent local devices and services.
Blockchain-registered Blockchain-based domains are registered and exchanged using a public
blockchain like
Ethereum. Oftentimes, these domains serve specific functions such as creating
human-readable references to
smart contract addresses used in
DApps or personal
wallet addresses. Generally, these non-standard domains are unreachable through the normal DNS resolution process and instead require clients to use some sort of transparent web proxy or gateway to access them
Alternate roots In the case of
alternative DNS roots, organizations or projects make use of the same mechanisms of the DNS but instead take on the role of ICANN in managing and administering an entirely separate root zone, thus having the ability to create new TLDs independently. However, this doesn't make these domains any less isolated from the rest of the internet, as the ability for clients to resolve them theoretically only requires switching to a
recursive DNS resolver that recognizes and serves records underneath the alternate root zone. ==See also==