Have you ever wondered how the suffixes on domain names are chosen and what they mean?  Considering registering a domain name for yourself?

See the list below.  Entries marked Unrestricted are available to the average website builder like you and me.

• .aero   Used solely by businesses engaged in the air transport industry.
• .biz   Created to provide relief for the wildly-popular .com suffix.  Unrestricted.
• .com   Originally intended for for-profit businesses, but has come to be used by all types of entities including non-profits, schools, and private individuals.  Unrestricted.
• .coop  Limited to cooperatives only.
• .edu  Used almost exclusively by U.S. colleges and universities which are accredited by an accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.
• .gov   Limited to U.S. government entities at the federal, state, and local levels.
• .info   Informational sites.  Unrestricted.
• .int   Strictly limited to organizations, offices, and programs which are endorsed by a treaty between two or more nations.
• .jobs   Designed to be added after the names of established companies with jobs to advertise.  Owners of a “company.jobs” domain are not permitted to post jobs of third party employers.
• .mil   Limited to use by the U.S. military.
• .mobi   Limited to sites designed for use by mobile devices.
• .museum   Used solely by entities verified to be legitimate museums.
• .name   For use by individuals, by name.  Registrations may be challenged if they are not by individuals, or by owners of fictional characters.  Unrestricted.
• .net   Originally intended for use by domains pointing to a distributed network of computers, or “umbrella” sites that act as the portal to a set of smaller websites.  Unrestricted.
• .org   Originally intended for, and still primarily used by, non-profit organizations.  Open registration.
• .pro   Reserved for licensed or certified lawyers, accountants, physicians and engineers.
• .tel   Reserved for internet communications services.
• .travel   Limited to travel and tourism industry related sites.
• .xxx   Reserved for sites providing sexually-explicit content, such as pornography.

This information was adapted from the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains