1. BACKGROUND

Domains are adminstrative entities that provide decentralized management of host naming and addressing. The domain-naming system is distributed and hierarchical.

The NIC is designated by the Defense Communications Agency (DCA) to provide registry services for the domain-naming system on the DDN and DARPA portions of the Internet.

As registrar of top-level and second-level domains, as well as administrator of the root domain name servers on behalf of DARPA and DDN, the NIC is responsible for maintaining the root server zone files and their binary equivalents. In addition, the NIC is responsible for administering the top-level domains of "ARPA," "COM," "EDU," "ORG," "GOV," and "MIL" on behalf of DCA and DARPA until it becomes feasible for other appropriate organizations to assume those responsibilities.

It is recommended that the guidelines described in this document be used by domain administrators in the establishment and control of second-level domains.