

100 Oldest .Com Domains  - whenimgone
http://www.whoisd.com/oldestcom.php

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greenyoda
That should really be the "100 Oldest .com Domains". Before the .com days, the
internet had two top-level domains: .ARPA (for ARPANET -- universities and
companies) and .MIL (for MILNET -- U.S. military). BBN was BBN.ARPA long
before it was BBN.COM (they developed the original internet routing hardware).

Since the old .ARPA domains no longer exist, the oldest domains still in use
today would probably be the .MIL domains (e.g., army.mil), which date back to
1983.

Wikipedia has a diagram of what the entire network looked like in 1977:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpanet>

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dlsspy
arpa is still published. I got a resume a few years ago from a guy who's email
address was something@arpa. That's just bad ass.

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lambada
Really? There's still Mailservers around for arpa? Wow. I wonder how many
e-mail validators that e-mail passes...

~~~
dlsspy
This was around 10 years ago (which is a lot more recent than I'd expect).
There's no MX or A record on arpa right now.

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Hoff
The "inter" in "internet" designated a way to route among disparate networks.

There were many network stacks back in the 1970s and 1980s, and even into the
1990s. uucp/uucpnet. Fido. DECnet. OSI. X.25.

It wasn't at all clear which one would become the dominant technology, and
(for a while in the early 1990s) it arguably ended up being between IP and OSI
networking.

Back then, path routing could be explicitly required, and you needed to know
about the old SMTP % email syntax, and particularly about the routes to well-
known hosts. Such as decvax. You really didn't have domains, you had bang-
paths.

Trivia: ftp is older than IP.

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rradu
Notably absent from the list: Microsoft.com

~~~
bradleyland
I noticed that as well. I was kind of surprised by it. Microsoft was well on
its way by 1991 when they finally registered their domain name. The only thing
I can figure is that back then, no one was really thinking, "This Internet
thing is going to be the center of the computing universe in 10 years."
Microsoft released Windows 3.1 in 1992, just a year after their domain was
registered.

Windows for Workgroups 3.1 (1992 release) was Microsoft's first operating
system where the fact that the computer was intended to connect to a network
was front and center. Maybe Microsoft didn't see the internet as a logical
imperative at this early stage of computing.

~~~
ahpeeyem
Microsoft didn't realise how important the internet was going to be until
after Windows 95 was released, and built their own online service called MSN
that was comparable to AOL.

They famously made a quick u-turn after Netscape Navigator became massively
popular, and Windows 98 was much more internet-focused.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN#MSN_Classic>

 _MSN was originally conceived as a dial-up online content provider like
America Online, supplying proprietary content through an artificial folder-
like interface integrated into Windows 95's Windows Explorer_

<http://www.internet-story.com/microsoft.htm>

 _Bill Gates almost missed the opportunity provided by Internet. At one time,
he even considered it to be merely a passing fad. However, once Microsoft had
realised Internet’s potential, the company not only rapidly caught up but
overtook its competitors_

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0xdeadc0de
blogspam? Why not the source <http://www.whoisd.com/oldestcom.php>

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rauljara
Most of them are companies, and most of the very earliest are tech companies.
So looking over the list was not much of a surprise. Except for the very first
one: SYMBOLICS.COM. They were a computer manufacturer, though I'd never heard
of them. Sadly, going to symbolics.com revealed a "parked page" that admitted
that it was a parked page looking to make money off the fact that
symbolics.com was the first registered domain name.

I say sad, because I was rather hoping it was the original site, preserved in
all its html 1 goodness.

EDIT - Actually, html wasn't around back then, so... I don't know. I guess I'd
like to see an emulator revealing what the site used to look like.

~~~
pinko
Symbolics made Lisp machines. Great company (for some definitions of "great"):
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolics>

~~~
timr
What I don't get is why they're the oldest domain. Even the first few nodes of
the internet (BBN, SRI, etc.) were registered as domains later than
symbolics.com

~~~
mseebach
It is not necessary to own a domain to connect a node to the Internet. DNS
wasn't introduced until 1985, and as there was no domain sharks back then,
there was really no rush to register.

Edit: DNS dates from 1983, the TLDs we know today from 1985.

~~~
duck
_there was no domain sharks back then_

Ah, the good ol'days.

~~~
gscott
And domains were free at that time too.

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aerique
Kesmai! Now there's a name I didn't expect to see that high up the list. I
paid up to $10 per hour to play Air Warrior[1] against people from other
countries, at least until I found a cheaper route to the much more populated
US servers (cris.com?).

[1] a WW2 flight sim, one of the first MMO'ish experiences for me in the early
90's.

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hollerith
The fourth oldest domain on the list is MCC.COM. Anyone know what company that
is?

~~~
sbierwagen
Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectronics_and_Computer_T...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectronics_and_Computer_Technology_Corporation)

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Joeri
Stargate.com is a peculiar one to be on the list.

Apparently this refers to Stargate Information Systems:
[http://www.decuslib.com/decus/vax88b3/vmsnet/suppinfo/servic...](http://www.decuslib.com/decus/vax88b3/vmsnet/suppinfo/services/stargate.txt)

You've got to wonder whether the term somehow inspired the movie.

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genbattle
And coming in at number 25: 08/05/1986 STARGATE.COM

Stargate must have been the first movie ever to get it's own .com domain? I
guess it reflects the crowd they were aiming for.

~~~
genbattle
Lol, just did the prerequisite research and found out the movie wasn't
released till 1994. Apparently this refers to another technology manufacturer.

And here i was hoping for something to break the monotony of technology
companies in the top 100.

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known
I find <http://www.dailychanges.com/top-sites/> interesting

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mikemoka
It's fun that Symbolics would probably still be here today,if they just
registered one more domain at the time.

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xtacy
All of them are .COM domains; is it because .NET/.EDU weren't around back
then?

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colonhyphenp
That list is just for .com domains. This Wikipedia entry lists old .com, .org,
.edu and .net domains:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_currently_re...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_currently_registered_Internet_domain_names)

Also, I found it amusing how much overlap there is between the 50 oldest .edu
domains and the US News list of top CS grad programs: [http://grad-
schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-gradu...](http://grad-
schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-
schools/computer-science-rankings)

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nrser
would like to thank the author of that page for not using hyperlinks.

ctrl+c, ctrl+v, ctrl+c...

~~~
VMG
in chrome you can select the text and use "go to ..." from the context menu

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pointillistic
a good name like octopus.com is not even hosted ditto mentat.com

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pitdesi
Symbolics.com was bought by domain squatter XF investments in 2009... some
information here about that (though price is undisclosed)
[http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/27/25-years-later-first-
regist...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/27/25-years-later-first-registered-
domain-name-changes-hands/)

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dlsspy
It hasn't been updated since 2003. Come back when there's an up-to-date oldest
list.

