On Sunday, April 25, 2004, 11:55:33 AM, Charles Gregory wrote:

In the case of the '.ca' TLD (www.circa.ca), the original hierarchical structure was: domain.city.prov.ca (eg fleanet.hamilton.on.ca). The 'ca' registry has since been opened up and many new '.ca' domains have the normal 2nd level format. But the registry still permits 3rd and 4th level domains under the exsiting provincial and municipality levels. I have no idea what safegaurds are in place, if any, to prevent spammers from trying to register fourth level domains. I expect all they would have to do is have a registered place of business in the municipality. I do know that the named province/municipality does *not* have any control over the assignments.

Both two and three level domain cases are handled where the two level domains can be anything.ca that are not listed as a known geographic TLD like on.ca (for Ontario province) and where the three level domain would be under a known two level TLD such as anything.on.ca.

A fourth level geographic domain, for example under a city name, may not be handled properly, but could be added. If we drive spammers to be desperate enough to use those then we've already had great success. :-)

Jeff C.