.tp is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for East Timor. The choice of letters, which stand for Timor Português or Portuguese Timor are a legacy of the nation's former status as a Portuguese colony. It was first introduced in December 1997 by Connect Ireland, an internet service provider in Dublin, Ireland, when East Timor was still under Indonesian rule.

It remains in use, although it does not comply with the ISO 3166-1 standard for the two-letter codes of the name of countries, as the code for East Timor changed from TP to TL upon independence.

Contents

1 Controversy 2 Transition to .tl 3 Dated IANA information 4 External links

Controversy

In 1999, prior to the holding of a referendum in East Timor on self-determination, websites with the '.tp' domain were attacked by hackers with pro-Indonesian sympathies, and Connect Ireland received malicious telephone calls. However, when independence leader Jose Ramos Horta, now East Timor's Foreign Minister, spoke out in favour of using hackers to attack Indonesian sites, Connect Ireland issued a press release condemning any use of hacking, least of all for political aims.

Transition to .tl

.tl is the ccTLD that does comply with the ISO 3166-1 standard, and the Department of Information Technology in East Timor is now working cooperatively with Connect Ireland to ensure a stable and secure transition to the .tl ccTLD, with existing registrants in the .tp ccTLD granted the same domain in the .tl ccTLD at no cost. Both the .tp and .tl "versions" will continue to resolve and registrant information, who-is data, and name server delegations will be the same for both .tp and .tl for legacy domains.

Dated IANA information

According to the IANA site, however, .tl is currently unassigned, with .tp still being listed for East Timor. (Xanana Gusmão, now the country's President, is still listed as the administrative contact.)

As of December 2004, there were no known .tl registrars listed on the IANA site. The .tl Whois information at was "last updated" on 2004-04-27, and it is reserved for Timor-Leste, the Portuguese name for East Timor (which it decided to be officially referred to when it joined the United Nations in 2002, as opposed to its English name). Even in that situation, there are no contacts, registration URL, or Whois Server assigned.

The Department of Information Technology in East Timor has sent a letter (http://www.nic.tp/doc/pdf/IANA27Dec04.pdf) to IANA requesting that this information be updated.

External links

• Timor-Leste (.TL) & East Timor (.TP) ccTLD NIC (http://www.nic.tp)
• Legacy www.nic.tp website (http://old.nic.tp)
• IANA .tp whois information (http://www.iana.org/root-whois/tp.htm)
• IANA .tl whois information (http://www.iana.org/root-whois/tl.htm)