A top-level domain, or ‘TLD’, is the group of letters that sit to the right of the final dot of any domain address. For example, in the address example.vip, .vip is the top level domain, while “example” is the second level domain (SLD).

TLDs are managed by entities called ‘registries’, which are overseen by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). A registry effectively holds the intellectual property for the top-level domain and manages the authoritative source of information for addresses registered in a particular top-level domain. A domain name registry is the authoritative source of information for domain names registered in a particular top-level domain.