The legacy ICANN/NSI set are, obviously, the most well known namespace on the Net, as they are the current extension of the original monolithic DNS system. OpenNIC's position on these TLDs and their registrars is that, for the sake of tradition and historical continuity, it would be inapopropriate to establish a TLD in conflict with these.

Traditionally, the two-character TLDs have been reserved for demarcation by political unit, the top level being reserved for coutries as designated by the International Standards Organization (ISO). OpenNIC will not establish any two-character TLDs, since countries come and go and ISO needs to be free to designate new country codes for them. The ISO country-code list are available from ISO at http://www.iso.ch or can be read online at http://www.bcpl.net/~jspath/isocodes.html.

There were seven global TLDs designated at the beginning of the DNS system. Three of these were given to Network Solutions, Inc. and, more recently, to ICANN:

• com
• net
• org

The other four are administered seperately by their own NICs:

• int - at .int NIC
• edu - also at NSI
• gov - at govNIC
• mil - at DoD NIC