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[Quinn Wood <wood.quinn.s AT gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 10:21 PM, Alex Bobadilla
<alex.bobadilla AT yandex.com> wrote:
> How does the below-second-level domain structure (e.g. .co.uk) work? Is it 
> just a simple subdomain?
>
To nip any confusion in the bud: the terms "top level domain",
"domain", and "subdomain" can be confusing.

The DNS hierarchy is a tree. "." is the root of that three, and zones
(branches) stem from it. For example in the hostname
"www.google.co.uk" which may resolve to an IP address or such, "uk" is
a zone within the root. "co" is a zone within "uk", and "google" is a
zone within "co". These zones are delegated to different entities who
have control over their contents, and can further delegate zones
within zones they have authority over.

OpenNIC allows you to either use a delegated zone like
"abobadilla.free" in which you can put things like
"www.abobadilla.free" and "mail.abobadilla.free". You can also propose
a new zone under the OpenNIC root (for example ".abobadilla") that
will be described and governed by a charter you have written. OpenNIC
community members will vote on whether or not to include your new zone
under the root and make it resolvable from all OpenNIC nameservers.

That's all there is to it. Go read DNS and BIND, get a DNS server
running and put some entries into it, and when you've decided you want
to host a zone write a charter and propose that the other OpenNIC
nameservers resolve it.