The net domain name extension has been with us practically forever. Well, in terms of the existence of the World Wide Web it has been anyway.

Actually, network domains preceded the World Wide Web. The extension was established in 1985 and it was not until 1991 that Tim Berners-Lee announced the debut of the Web as a public access service on the Internet.

Net is one of the original Top Level Domains (TLDs); along with com, edu, gov, mil, and org.

While the first domain name to be registered was one ending in com, the first one created was a network name in January 1985: Nordu.net; which used to be the identifier of the first root server, nic.nordu.net.

Nordu.net is a data communication network that interconnects the national research and education networks of the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden; and is still in operation today.

The original intent of net was for only network providers to use it, but these days registering a network domain name is unrestricted: anyone anywhere in the world can register a network name just as easily as registering a domain name. com.

According to registry operator Verisign, which took over oversight of the extension after acquiring Network Solutions in 2005, net is often used in Internet backbone operations and is directly or indirectly involved with at least 30 percent of all Internet activity.

After com and de (the country code top level domain – ccTLD – for Germany), net is the most popular TLD in the world.

These days a network name is popular with tech companies, or as an alternative to com if that version has already been registered.

However, registering a.net under those circumstances can sometimes backfire. Since .com has such high recognition levels, incoming traffic can be lost on the com domain.

When it comes to reselling domain names, a netname will generally sell for much less than its com counterpart; therefore, net names are often avoided by those in the domain reselling market, unless they are single generic word names or common terms, as they can still fetch very attractive prices.

Still, even with these few drawbacks, a network name has a number of advantages, including the fact that the extension is globally recognized and generally trusted by consumers.

Some companies also register the network version of their com domain as a defensive measure against cybersquatting.

As of November 2011, it was estimated that over 14 million domain names ending in net had currently been registered.