The first of a series of new top-level Internet domain names were offered for sale Monday. The top-level domain is the final component in computers' names on the Internet, and for more than fifteen years, only a handful of three-letter names (such as .com and .edu) and two-letter country codes (such as .uk for sites in the United Kingdom and .zh for sites in China) have been available.
The new top-level domain, .info, is managed by Afilas, an Ireland-based consortium of Internet domain name registrars. Most registrants have been European, in contrast to .com, which is dominated by U.S. companies. Over 350,000 .info domains have been registered.
Few .info domains are currently functional, and of those, most simply point to information available on other Web sites, such as Dell's page at .
