Sometime next year, CEMT itself will start distributing the zone files to those servers, taking InterNIC out of the loop. About half the requests received by the center come from state and local governments. Staff members end up explaining the Internet Engineering Task Force's Request for Comments 2146 document to many people who request .gov names. RFC 2146, prepared with the help of the Federal Networking Council, sets out requirements that restrict the domain to federal offices. The center encourages state and local governments to use the .us domain.
Federal offices can use that, too.
CEMT has reserved the address .fed.us , which federal groups also can use. A computers.fed.org address has been set up to channel surplus federal computer equipment to schools, for example. CEMT offers dual registration for any office that wants to reserve a name under both .gov and .fed.us domains. This could be the start of a migration by federal groups toward the country domain system that's being adopted by much of the rest of the world. The center also helps with registration for other services, such as X.500 directory information base systems and X.400 private management domain systems for message handling.