.edu

The domain name .edu is a sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. The domain was implemented in 1985 to create a domain name hierarchy for organizations with a focus on education. At the time, it was open for registration for entities from any region. Since 2001, new registrants for second-level domain names have been required to be United States–affiliated institutions of higher education. List of the oldest currently registered .edu domain names The domain edu was implemented in April 1985 as a generic top-level domain. Six universities were the initial registrants that month. UCLA was among this group of the first schools to have their URLs registered. And while the first ARPAnet message was sent from UCLA to Stanford, Stanford did not have their URL registered until half a year after these first schools, becoming the 18th .edu site. Until 2001, Network Solutions served as registrar for edu under an arrangement with the U.S. Department of Commerce. Domain registration was done at no cost to educational institutions. In 2001, the Commerce Department entered into a five-year agreement with Educause making that organization the registrar for the .edu domain. The agreement with Educause was extended for an additional five-year period in 2006; at that time Educause was authorized to begin charging a yearly administrative fee to registrants. The domain edu was originally intended for educational institutions anywhere in the world. However, most of the institutions that obtained edu registrations were in the United States, while non-U.S. educational institutions typically used country-level domains. In 1993, a decision attributed to Jon Postel limited new registrations in the edu domain to four-year postsecondary educational institutions. This prevented new edu registrations by community colleges and other institutions offering less than four years of postsecondary schooling. Enforcement of the restrictions in the 1990s was not entirely effective.