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The First 100 Dot Coms Ever Registered

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the bet-mine-isn't-in-there dept.

roman1 submitted an interesting list containing the first 100 .com domains registered. Many of the names you haven't heard of, many you have. What was interesting to me is that it took 2 years just to get 100 domains on-line.

11 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. Symbolics ... by foobsr · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... here is some pictures of a symbolics (those with the first domasin) machine for those who cannot imagine ...

    http://home.hakuhale.net/rbc/symbolics/20041113/20041113.html

    CC.

    --
    TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
    1. Re:Symbolics ... by rs79 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Symbolics wasn't actually first, DEC was. Brian Reid registered it in January (and still has the datestamped mail from the Internic) but they screwed up the dates in whois.

      Mitre.org was the fitst domain registered.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    2. Re:Symbolics ... by 5pp000 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Symbolics was basically out of business in about 1988. (A very small, as in no more than 2 full time people, company of that name existed until a year or two ago, but all they did with hardware was to maintain what had been manufactured by the original Symbolics.) 2004 is simply the year these photos were taken.

      You're right that the very first models -- the LM-2 and 3600 -- were refrigerator-sized, but it wasn't long before they also started building some smaller models. The 3640 was very roughly 20"w x 30"h x 36"d, and the 3610/3620, which used gate arrays, was about 10"w x 24"h x 30"d -- this is the model pictured in the center and center-right photos on that page. Finally, there was the Ivory chip, which powered the MacIvory coprocessor card (this is what's being shown in the upper left photo) and the XL and UX series. I still have a working XL-1200; it's about the size of two Sun "pizza boxes" stacked vertically, maybe 16" x 16" x 8"h. I believe this machine was out in 1987.

      (All dimensions guesstimated from memory -- figure a 20% margin of error.)

      --
      Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
  2. wiki by tofupup · · Score: 5, Informative

    here is a nice linked list of the *.com list
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com

  3. And some sites still have 80's design by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 3, Informative
    Like John Gilmore's site.

    Simple and to the point.

    BTW this is the guy who can't fly because he refuses to get a government issued ID. Interesting stuff.

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    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
  4. .org was always a catch-all by Cadre · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm sure when the net was young that .orgs had to be non profit

    .org was not created for non-profit organizations, it was originally created as a catch-all for organizations that didn't meet the requirements for the other gTLDs. PIR's History Page, RFC 920, RFC 1591

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    All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
  5. Re:How much did it cost? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    There was an electronic form, a text file you'd download from sri-nic.arpa (later nic.ddn.mil), fill in the blanks and email back to sri-nic.

    For all that, it wasn't all that far removed from "Hey Jack".

  6. Re:How much did it cost? by RevWaldo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not so much a cost issue but up until the mid-90's the PITA factor was a major hit in setting up a domain. No hosting services, so you'd need your own server. Private lines were way expensive and difficult to get set up with the phone company. No DSL so you'd need ISDN (56k! Wicked fast!) or bone up for a T1 or partial T1 which could run you $1000/month easy. Not to mention all the paperwork you'd have to submit to interNIC, etc. The best revenge on all the domain squatting is that all the "now a household word" domains use words no one would think were valuable - yahoo, google, etc ad infinitum. Have you had a need to visit computer.com? telephone.com? television.com?

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    Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
  7. Let's keep things in context by north.coaster · · Score: 3, Informative

    Remember that this took place during the time frame of the transition from a research oriented network (the ARPANET) to a larger, more production oriented network. The World Wide Web in it's current form had not even been invented yet. The creation of the .com domain was driven by a technical requirement to switch to a hierarchical based system, replacing a flat name space. The first step was to adopt the temporary .arpa domain name. Most companies then switched from the .arpa domain to the .com domain when their technical staff was ready to make the transition.

    In other words, registering for a .com domain was an administrative necessity for the relatively small number of companies that were connected to the DARPA Internet at that time. It was not a business decision.

    Putting this in context, during this same time frame lot of universities were connected to a different network, called CSNET. BITNET was also very active during this period. Although there were interconnections between the DARPA Internet, CSNET, and BITNET, each was a truly independent network. A lot of companies with Unix installations were on UUCP (which did not use a domain based name system).

    Considering the market segments that companies like Microsoft were involved with in the mid 1980's, it should not surprise anyone that they were not among the first to register for .com domains. It would not have made any sense for them to do so.

  8. Re:Internet connections by raju1kabir · · Score: 4, Informative

    It was free for a long time. Then they started charging a one-time administration fee (the amount of which I've long since forgotten). And finally we came to the annual-fee arrangement in place now.

    --
    "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
  9. Re:What about .ARPA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Before the domain name system was invented, there were just hostnames. ARPANET hosts had single, flat hostnames like SRI-NIC or UCBVAX (at Berkeley) or SU-TAC (Stanford) or MIT-EDDIE (which had a sibling, MIT-DEEP-THOUGHT). These were all kept in a single flat text file, maintained centrally by SRI-NIC (the Network Information Center at Stanford Research International).

    When the ARPANET started implementing the DNS, .ARPA was invented as a temporary transitional measure. All those existing flat hostnames gained a .ARPA suffix, so they could be made to fit into the DNS while each institution managed a transition to "real" domains.

    Today, as already mentioned, .arpa contains only certain low-level infrastructure like in-addr.arpa.