The internet has evolved in remarkable ways since its inception, transforming from a directory of static web pages in the early 90s to the interactive and immersive digital landscape everybody navigates today. Amidst these monumental shifts, the Domain Name System (DNS) - a critically important backbone of the web - has undergone transformative changes of its own.
In its nascent stages, the internet was envisioned as a far more linear place than its current iteration. Until 2000, many of the websites you could visit ended in .com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .org, .net, and .int, with all of these top-level domains inextricably tied to their owner’s function, in addition to the country code domains such as .uk and .fr. If you visited a .com, you’d see a commercial entity, with network infrastructures tied to .net domains and .org domains for those that didn’t quite fit. This is not true of the internet today, with over 1500 domains in use and .com, .net, and .org now being entirely unrestricted in who owns them, knowing the value of your domain has become more challenging for businesses in the online world.
