The development of the dot-bank name is an outgrowth of the 2008 decision of ICANN to open up the Internet to thousands of additional
top-level domains in addition to existing ones such as dot-corn and dot-org.
Many
top-level domains (TLDs) already exist, including .com, .net, .org.
As the first new
Top-Level Domain, .shabaka is set to become the centre of all things Arabic on the Internet.
In the past,
Top-Level Domains have been restricted to generic strings, such as "com" and "net", and country codes, such as "ae" for the UAE and "uk" for the United Kingdom.
CROSS-PARTY support has been given to a bid for Wales to secure online
top-level domain name status.
In all, 22 generic
top-level domain extensions are now in existence.
ICANN, a not-for-profit body charged with administering the internet address system, has released
top-level domain names in what has been hailed as a radical move since the 21 generic internet domains were created in the 1980s.