.pw

Infobox Top level domain
name=.pw
background=#CCF


introduced=1997
type=Country code top-level domain
status=Active
registry=PW Registry Corporation
sponsor=Micronesia Investment and Development Corporation
intendeduse=Entities connected with Palau
actualuse=Marketed for personal e-mail addresses
restrictions=None
structure=Registrations are for third-level names and their corresponding e-mail addresses within second-level names
document=
disputepolicy= [http://dn.hkiac.org/pw/pw_policy.html PWTLD dispute resolution policy]
website= [http://www.pwregistry.pw/ PW Registry] |

.pw is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Palau.

.pw has been opened for personal registrations under a similar structure to that which .name had at its original launch, in which people can obtain third level registrations of the form john.smith.pw along with the corresponding e-mail address of [e-mail]. Second-level domain registrations are not permitted, so that the registry can reserve all second-level names for use in constructing these addresses. Trademark owners have the possibility to apply for a defensive registration that will prevent anybody else from registering a third-level domain that contains that trademark.

The personal e-mail offered in .pw has the feature of spam-prevention through the use of whitelisting; senders must be authorized before their messages can get through.

Through a DNS wildcard record, most second-level names in .pw go to a page offering registration of addresses within that name. Attempts to access any unregistered third-level domain similarly return a page offering registration of that specific address; for instance the website "satan.evil.pw" would return an advert claiming "it can be used for anything: the evil surname, the evil family, the evil fan club, the evil alumni group, evil genealogy, or any other community or group about evil."

The traditional registry address of nic.pw goes to one of these wildcard pages; the actual official registry site is at pwregistry.pw.

Local use

According to [http://www.pwregistry.pw/downloads/policies/policy01.pdf] , "the proposed .pw structure is to establish a fixed number of second level domains (also called subdomains) for use by the local Palauan Internet community. The rest of the .pw namespace will be allocated for international use and value-added services."

The six groups of domains identified for local use within the Palauan Internet Community are:
* com.pw: for commercial use; use is not restricted
* net.pw: for technology service providers; use is not restricted
* org.pw: for non-commercial organizations; organizations must be registered at the Office of Corporate Registrar
* edu.pw: for educational institutions; Ministry of Education certification required
* gov.pw: for governmental agencies only
* belau.pw: for indigenous art, history and culture use, tourism and general purposes; use is not restricted

As of 2008, there is very little use of these domains for anything actually related to Palau, other than a site at [http://www.survivorpw.pw/ survivorpw.pw] pertaining to the reality television program .

Even the government of Palau does not use this domain for its own sites; it uses [http://www.palaugov.net/ palaugov.net] , an address in the .net domain originally intended for network connectivity providers. The site of the Palau embassy in Washington, DC likewise is at [http://www.palauembassy.com/ palauembassy.com] , where .com is a domain intended for commercial entities.

Oddly, http://palau.gov.pw/ and http://www.gov.pw/ merely return the same templated advertisement "Welcome to the 'gov' community. Get an email address that matches Palau gov..." that is on all other vacant .pw domains. Only upon checking availability does the webpage finally correctly acknowledge that "Sorry, the name gov is reserved".

External links

* [http://www.iana.org/root-whois/pw.htm IANA .pw whois information]
* [http://www.pwregistry.pw .pw domain registration website]