.arpa
| Manager: | IANA |
| Registry Provider: | .ARPA Registry |
| Date Implemented: | 1985 |
| Type: | TLD |
| Community: | Internet-infrastructure purposes only |
More information: 
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.arpa stands for Address and Routing Parameter Area. It is one of the original top level domain names (TLDs) delegated in the root zone of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the internet. It is classified as infrastructure top-level domain name and it is exclusively used to support operationally-critical infrastructural identifier spaces. The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) collaborate in managing the .arpa TLD. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is in-charge in the operational administration of the TLD with the cooperation of the technical community. Technical guidelines are provided by IAB.[1] [2]
Originally, .arpa was established as a temporary domain that will serve as a transition mechanism for a set of host names in the ARPANET that were administered by DARPA. The host names will be phased out after a replacement domain name has been created under the categorized TLDs which include .com, .edu, .mil, .net, .gov and .org.[3] Although the initial plan for .arpa is to purge everything after the transition, the sub-domain in-addr.arpa remained active and it has been utilized for reverse DNS query of Internet Protocol addresses. [4]
In 2000, the IAB informed the technical community that the .arpa has been re-designated as Address and Routing Parameter Area. The .arpa will serve as a single domain where all new infrastructure sub-domains will be placed to maintain the stability of the internet. The IAB also recommended to the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) that no new infrastructure domains should be added to .int and protocols requiring specific domain roots should be rooted elsewhere, new infrastructure domains from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) protocols must be allocated to the .arpa TLD. Management will be handled by IANA. In addition. the IAB also suggested the review of all existing IETF infrastructures allocated under .int if the costs of transferring them is greater than the risk of staying in place. The IAB believed that allocating the IPv6 reverse mapping domain is more significant and beneficial. [5]
Uses for .arpa
IANA enumerated the following uses for .arpa domain, which include:<re>ARPA Zone Management</ref>
- E164.ARPA - mapping E.164 numbers to Internet URIs
- IN-ADDR-SERVERS.ARPA- hosting authoritative name servers for the in-addr.arpa domain
- IN-ADDR.ARPA- mapping IPv4 addresses to Internet domain names
- IP6-SERVERS.ARPA- hosting authoritative name servers for the ip6.arpa domain
- IP6.ARPA- mapping IPv6 addresses to Internet domain names
- IRIS.ARPA- locating Internet Registry Information Services
- URI.ARPA- resolving Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) according to the Dynamic Delegation Discovery System
- URN.ARPA- resolving Uniform Resource Names (URN) according to the Dynamic Delegation Discovery System