Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Only connect

Nerd trivia.

What is common to the alphabets x, q, z, and i, in the context of the Internet?









Answer: If you type x,q, i or z.com as the URL, it works. No, the other letters don't.

There are six single-letter domain names on the internet, which were registered before ICANN refused to distribute any more in 1993. They are, q.com for Qwest Communications; x.com owned by PayPal (it still works); z.com for Nissan's Z cars; i.net, a domain name registration company; q.net, for Q Networks; and x.org for the X.Org Foundation.

ICANN stopped giving out single-letter second-level domain names in 1993, because it was afraid that 'two-dot' domain names may not be enough to cover all the websites in the world, and it may need to use these single letter domain names to introduce another level (eg,: google.x.com ).

More nerd trivia.

4 comments:

sockrebel said...

wow! thanks! i didn't know that

Anonymous said...

One more geeky post :)

I am enlightened (no-pun, it was very informative).

Happy T'day.

sbkt said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
sbkt said...

hey amaresh...thanks for stopping by...

"glad to see you still think about things trivial"

what else is there? :)