"On the Net, an electronic mail address. A Net address consists of a netter's login name, followed by an 'at' sign (@) and a site name, which includes an organizational suffix and, if the site is outside the United States, a country suffix. For example, sid@anarchy.edu.uk indicates that Sid (login name) collects his mail at Anarchy University in Britain (the 'edu' suffix indicates that 'anarchy' refers to some kind of educational institution). While .edu is the most common type of address in Usenet, there are others: .com means the netter is at a commercial site (this includes dial-in bulletin boards as well as companies); .org means a nongovernmental organization, often a nonprofit one; and .mil indicates a military site". --J.C.Herz (in Surfing on the Internet , 1995).