The New Hacker's Dictionary

Reading Internet addresses is something of an art. Here are the four most important top-level functional Internet domains followed by a selection of geographical domains:

com

commercial organizations

edu

educational institutions

gov

U.S. government civilian sites

mil

U.S. military sites

Note that most of the sites in the com and edu domains are in the U.S. or Canada.

us

sites in the U.S. outside the functional domains

su

sites in the ex-Soviet Union (see kremvax).

uk

sites in the United Kingdom

Within the us domain, there are subdomains for the fifty states, each generally with a name identical to the state's postal abbreviation. Within the uk domain, there is an ac subdomain for academic sites and a co domain for commercial ones. Other top-level domains may be divided up in similar ways.

Internet Death Penalty //

[Usenet] (often abbreviated IDP) The ultimate sanction against spam-emitting sites -- complete shunning at the router level of all mail and packets, as well as Usenet messages, from the offending domain(s). Compare Usenet Death Penalty, with which it is sometimes confused.

Internet Exploder //

[very common] Pejorative hackerism for Microsoft's "Internet Explorer" web browser (also "Internet Exploiter"). Compare HP-SUX, AIDX, buglix, Macintrash, Telerat, ScumOS, sun-stools, Slowlaris.