.ss is the designated
country code top-level domain
A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and al ...
(ccTLD) for
South Sudan
South Sudan (; din, Paguot Thudän), officially the Republic of South Sudan ( din, Paankɔc Cuëny Thudän), is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia, Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of t ...
in the
Domain Name System
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned ...
of the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
. It is derived from the
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), to represent countries, dependent territories, and special areas ...
code for South Sudan, which is ''
SS''. According to ''CIO East Africa'', the TLD was allocated on 10 August 2011 following the country's
declaration of independence from
Sudan
Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic ...
. The TLD was registered on 31 August 2011, but not added to the
DNS root zone and was thus not operational. It was approved at the
ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespac ...
Board meeting on 27 January 2019 and was added to the
DNS root zone on 2 February 2019.
Before .ss was successfully registered, the country's Undersecretary for Telecommunications had initially been concerned about the ccTLD request's possible rejection due to ''SS'' also being an abbreviation for
Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe ...
, the paramilitary force of
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
.
Before the independence of South Sudan, the applicable domain was
.sd, Sudan's top-level Internet domain.
Registration of .ss domain names launched in three phases starting June 1, 2020, with general availability starting September 1, 2020.
Second-level domains
There also exist a number of second-level domains:
* .com.ss – open to all applicants (intended for commercial entities)
* .biz.ss – any business entity
* .net.ss – for network operators
* .org.ss – for South Sudan NGOs
* .edu.ss – for South Sudan higher educational institutions
* .sch.ss – for South Sudan secondary and primary schools
* .me.ss – for personal websites (name.me.ss)
* .gov.ss – for South Sudan government entities only
References
External links
ssNIC
Country code top-level domains
Telecommunications in South Sudan
Computer-related introductions in 2011
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