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.com,.us are TLD,top level domain, and co.uk are SLD,second level domain.

Are there "third level domain, fourth level domain" and so on?

How many different TLDs and SLDs are out there?

Mark Henderson
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  • `co.uk` is in fact **TLD** – vps Feb 06 '10 at 11:45
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    `.co.uk` is not a **TLD**, but `.uk` is a **TLD** and **ccTLD** (country code top level domain). The manager of `.uk` have decided to divide its sub domains into commercial, education etc. But others has not, like `.se` or `.us`. That is up to the owner of the `TLD` to decide how to do. – Anders Oct 04 '10 at 16:24

4 Answers4

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This link seems to have the most relevant detail Wiki - DNS_Label - Domain name formulation

The hierarchy of domains descends from right to left; each label to the left specifies a subdivision, or subdomain of the domain to the right. For example: the label example specifies a subdomain of the com domain, and www is a subdomain of example.com. This tree of subdivisions may consist of 127 levels.

Each label may contain up to 63 characters. The full domain name may not exceed a total length of 253 characters. In practice, some domain registries may have shorter limits.

You asked in a comment

sub1.google.com is also owned by owner of google.com,but that's not the case for news.bbs.co.uk,say it's not owned by owner of co.uk,but bbs.co.uk!

Any owner of a domain may delegate authority to anyone else. If I was the owner of example.com, I could delegate authority for sub.example.com to you. Anyone can delegate their subdomains to other organizations. If you curious about the policies for a particular domain you'll probably need to find the correct contact for that domain.

Zoredache
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I just jumped onto my DNS and created this:

alt text
(source: 41085.org)

That's 29 levels and counting, so I guess as John said, you can just keep going and going and going

Glorfindel
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Mark Henderson
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    "the full domain name may not exceed a total length of 253 characters" apparently, so assuming a very short top+second (for example is.gd) you could have 126 levels (including the .is and .gd) if each sub division is only a single character. – David Spillett Feb 06 '10 at 12:39
  • That is actually 127, as you have the top level "`.`" too. The one above is and gd. – Anders Jan 02 '15 at 03:40
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name#Second-level_and_lower_level_domains

ta.speot.is
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  • But `sub1.google.com` is essentially `google.com`.While it's not the case for `news.bbs.co.uk`,its domain is `bbs.co.uk` –  Feb 04 '10 at 02:16
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    sub1.google.com is not essentially google.com, if an A record for abc.com and an A record for sub1.abc.com that are the same then there won't be any difference in the website you visit unless the web server implements host header filtering. It depends where people point their domains to. – ta.speot.is Feb 04 '10 at 03:32
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    I mean `sub1.google.com` is also owned by owner of `google.com`,but that's not the case for `news.bbs.co.uk`,say it's not owned by owner of `co.uk`,but `bbs.co.uk`! –  Feb 04 '10 at 04:25
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    Who is the "owner" of a subdomain is decided by the one owning the domain above. So who owns `sub1.google.com` is decided by `google.com` and who owns `news.bbs.co.uk` is decided by `bbs.co.uk`. And who owns `uk` is decided by the owner of `.`. – Anders Jan 02 '15 at 03:43
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I'm not aware of a technical limit to the number of levels but to be sure you should consult the RFCs relating to DNS.

An example such as news.bbs.co.uk, as you used in a comment, shows four levels already.

John Gardeniers
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