.edu

Educause
Introduced	1985
TLD type	Generic top-level domain
Status	Active
Registry	Educause (operated by VeriSign)
Sponsor	Not technically sponsored, but Educause is a nonprofit organization
Intended use	Educational institutions
Actual use	Accredited post-secondary institutions, almost entirely within the United States of America
Registration restrictions	Must be accredited by an agency on the U.S. Department of Education's list of Nationally recognized accrediting agencies. Some older registrations are grandfathered.
Structure	Registrations at second level permitted
Documents	RFC 920; RFC 1591; US Department of Commerce agreement
Dispute policies	Educause may revoke registrations if policy provisions are violated.
Web site

.edu (education) is the generic top-level domain for educational institutions, primarily those in the United States^[1].

History

Created in January 1985 as one of the first top-level domains, .edu was originally intended for educational institutions anywhere in the world. With few exceptions, however, only those in the United States registered such domains, while educational institutions in other countries usually used domain names under the appropriate country code TLD. In some countries a second-level domain is used to indicate an educational institutions (e.g. .edu.mx in Mexico, .edu.au in Australia, .ac.uk and .sch.uk in the United Kingdom) and in others only the country code is used (e.g. in Canada, Germany and France). In Germany, the second-level domain often has a prefix indicating the kind of institution (uni for Universität, fh for Fachhochschule, for instance www.uni-erfurt.de and www.fh-erfurt.de) or, if there are several institutions of the same type, the abbreviation of the institutions name (for instance www.fu-berlin.de, www.tu-berlin.de and www.hu-berlin.de for the three Berlin universities).

Examples of non-US .edu domain is the French polytechnique.edu, the Belgian solvay.edu, the Swedish korteboskolan.edu, Kosovo uni-pr.edu, the Indian nist.edu or the Thai au.edu. Many institutions whose primary sites are located in local second-level domains run mirror sites in the .edu domain, such as oxford.edu mirroring ox.ac.uk, or monash.edu mirroring monash.edu.au.

Accreditation

Starting on October 29, 2001, only post-secondary institutions that are accredited by an agency on the U.S. Department of Education's list of nationally recognized accrediting agencies are eligible to apply for a .edu domain.^[2] Most such agencies accredit only US institutions, so very few non-US institutions qualify, and .edu remains almost exclusively a top-level domain of the United States.

Note that the current eligibility requirements apply only to new applicants. Several non-qualifying institutions retain their .edu domains obtained before the current rules came into force.

Examples of these include Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a public secondary school at tjhsst.edu, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy at imsa.edu, and the University of the West Indies, an international university, at uwi.edu. Other non-post-secondary institutions with .edu domains include Phillips Exeter Academy, a private secondary school at exeter.edu; Montgomery Blair High School, a public magnet high school in Montgomery County, MD (located at mbhs.edu); and Phillips Academy Andover, a private secondary school at andover.edu.

Other uses

A few of the existing .edu domain registrants are not schools; often these are established museums or have some connection to education and research:

brook.edu	Brookings Institution	A research and policy institute.
si.edu	Smithsonian Institution	A national museum ("America's national educational facility").
getty.edu	J. Paul Getty Trust	An international cultural and philanthropic organization in Los Angeles, California.
educause.edu	Educause	The .edu registry itself, as "a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology".
fi.edu	Franklin Institute Science Museum	A museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
exploratorium.edu	Exploratorium	A science museum in San Francisco, California.
iom.edu	Institutes of Medicine	An academy associated with the National Academy of Sciences.
folger.edu	Folger Shakespeare Library	A library in Washington, D.C..
stsci.edu	Space Telescope Science Institute	The organization that selects the science program for the Hubble Space Telescope.
pns.edu	Psiimond Network Services	A private web design company.
fivecolleges.edu	Five Colleges, Inc.	A consortium of five institutions of higher education in Massachusetts: not a conventional university.

Country-code second-level domains

The restriction to post-secondary institutions does not apply to the corresponding domains in some other countries. For example, the British .ac.uk second-level domain is also used by Further Education colleges, museums, learned societies and UCAS.

In some countries, .edu.xx is an ordinary domain with no special significance; in others it has been issued to a local Department of Education or has been deliberately reserved and not issued to anyone to prevent confusion. The use of .ac.xx or .edu.xx within individual ccTLD's does not follow one unified international standard.

Registry

Educause is the authoritative registry provider for .edu, and is also its exclusive registrar as .edu is a closed system. The applying institution must apply directly to Educause and show proof of their accredidation, only then will they be given a domain name. While Educause is a non-profit agency, it does charge an annual fee for each domain name. All of the money that is made from these fees goes into the costs of maintaining the infrastructure for .edu. Educause, as the sole registrar, resolves domain name disputes and all other policy matters for .edu. Ultimate authority for .edu rests with the US Department of Commerce. As far as the actual technical administration, Educause directly runs and maintains the technical components for the registrar and registration portion of the operation in-house, but they contract out the operation of the registry nameservers for the domain, currently, to VeriSign's Registry hosting services.

References

External links

• .edu Home Page
• .edu Domain Space (U.S. Department of Commerce)
• IANA .edu whois information
• RFC 920 defined .edu and the other original top-level domains.
• Database for Accreditation in the United States (CHEA)
• Database for Accreditation in the United States (USDE)

•  • [ e] Generic top-level domains
Unsponsored	.biz  .com  .edu  .gov  .info  .int  .mil  .name  .net  .org
Sponsored	.aero  .asia  .cat  .coop  .jobs  .mobi  .museum  .pro  .tel  .travel
Infrastructure	.arpa  .root
Proposed	.berlin  .bzh  .cym  .gal  .geo  .kid  .kids  .lat  .mail  .nyc  .post  .sco  .web  .xxx
Deleted/retired	.nato
Reserved	.example  .invalid  .localhost  .test
Pseudo-domains	.bitnet  .csnet  .ip  .local  .onion  .uucp
Unofficial	see Alternative DNS roots
See also: Country code top-level domains