Used for a varied assortment of sites, few related to Tonga. Often used for torrent websites, technology startups inToronto,domain hacks, and unlicensed movie streaming websites.
Registration restrictions
Open to everyone, but use forspam as well as some vulgar words are prohibited.
Structure
Registrations permitted at second level; some Tonga-related entities have domains at third level under labels like.gov.to
The government of Tonga sells domains in its ccTLD to any interested party. The .to ccTLD is administered by the Tonga Network Information Center (Tonic).[1]
The .to top-level domain was widely commercialized in 1997 by the San Francisco company Tonic Corp. (founded by Eric Gullichsen and Eric Lyons) which would sell domains at $100 per unit. They operated with the approval ofPrince Siaosi, then-Crown Prince of Tonga. Network Solutions was already selling .to domains, but in a very chaotic fashion. Domain requests were processed by the Tongan consulate in San Francisco.[2]
The top-level domainto itself had an A record and an HTTP server since at least 1998.[3]
Becauseto is a common English preposition, it became popular to craft memorable URLs calleddomain hacks that take advantage of this;URL shortening/redirection services andtorrent aggregators (e.g.isohunt.to) are popular uses. Other domain hacks do not use theto as a preposition but rather as a syllable inside of a word, includingDaniel J. Bernstein's website cr.yp.to, London web development company Potato p.ota.to.
"T.O." is also a common nickname forToronto, Ontario, Canada, and is used as a city domain. This domain is also used for the city ofTorino (Turin), Italy, and also as adomain hack inSlavic languages (to meaningit orthat) – such as the uploading service uloz.to ("ulož to" means "save it" inCzech andSlovak).
As the .to domains are purchased, all normal DNS operations are possible and registered sites are not required to display ads on behalf of the registrar. Some domains are free, like .edu.to, but only to real Tongan educational institutions. At this moment businesses registered in Tonga can also get free domains. People who sell on .to domains can claim a commission.
.to is one of the few ccTLDs that (officially) does not maintain a (public)WHOIS database for providing registrant information. It is possible to contact domain registrants via tonic.to by typing the domain in the domain search field under "New Domain Name".[4] This has resulted in limited popularity for the use of .to for websites involved incopyright infringement.
The .to registry allows the creation of emoji domain names. A former .to registrar, Register.TO, did support the search and registration of .toemoji domain names.[5][6] Register.TO is no longer an authorized registrar for .to domain names, following the death of its owner in early 2023 as stated by the NIC of Tonga.[7]
_(logo).png)