.yu was the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) that was assigned to SFR Yugoslavia in 1989 and was mainly used by Serbia and Montenegro and its two successor states. After Montenegro and Serbia acquired separate .me and .rs domains in 2007, a transition period started, and the .yu domain finally expired in 2010.
History
The .yu ccTLD was assigned originally to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, during the government project for the development of scientific-technological information (SNTIJ). The official registrants were the University of Maribor and the Jožef Stefan Institute, which were located in Slovenia. Computer scientist Borka Jerman Blažič registered the domain in 1989, which allowed Yugoslavia to have an Internet connection.
When the SFR Yugoslavia dissolved, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia registered their own ccTLDs (.si, .hr, .ba and .mk). Serbia and Montenegro formed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, but was under international sanctions at the time because of ongoing Yugoslav wars. Between 1992 and 1994, the domain was run by ARNES who only used it for email. ARNES rejected all requests by Serbian institutions for new domains, severely limiting the country's access to the internet. The domain became a succession matter when the Slovenians refused to relinquish the domain name to the University of Belgrade in Serbia, which had requested they do so.
Following the personal intervention of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority founder Jon Postel, A two-year transition period started, and the .yu domain was scheduled to expire on 30 September 2009. However, the Serbian registrar requested an extension and ICANN decided to extend the transition deadline another six months. Finally, the Serbian registrar declared the end of the .yu domain at 12:00 CEST on 30 March 2010. All .yu websites that failed to transition were rendered inaccessible, including historical ones.
RNIDS estimated there to have been around four thousand active websites using the .yu domain at the time of its deprecation.
Former use of .yu domains
All of the domains directly under .yu were reserved for legal entities only. Top level domain was reserved for federal institutions and official governmental institutions, as well as Internet service providers. The Serbian Orthodox Church was also allowed to use .yu domain.
The second-level domains under .yu included:
- Academic organizations, such as universities, used the .ac.yu domain. For example, the School of Electrical Engineering (ETF) at the University of Belgrade (BG) had the etf.bg.ac.yu domain.
- Educational institutions, such as primary and high schools, used the .edu.yu domain.
- Independent organizations used the .org.yu domain.
- Corporations used the .co.yu domain.
- The Government used the .gov.yu domain.
Montenegrin websites often used the .cg.yu subdomain which was given for free to customers of a Montenegrin ISP which controlled the domain, which made it a popular option for those who opted not to purchase a domain for their website.
In the media
The domain is part of the story in the 2013 mini-documentary film From Yu to Me.
See also
- .rs and .me, the ccTLD pair which replaced .yu since 2007.