Beginning today, I’m going to publish a series of articles as part of a guide to domain names that I’m writing. The articles will be published at irregular intervals, depending on how much time I can allocate to writing in any given week. The series will be completed over time and it’ll be made available on this blog for free. In the end, it will consist of 20-30 articles covering various aspects of the domain name industry.
In this first article of the Domain Guide, I’d like to explain what exactly a domain name is and what it is used for. This is a very basic article, so if you’re already familiar with the concept of domain names you might want to skip to a later article in the series.
Structure of the article:
- Introduction
- What is a Domain Name?
- Domain Name Extensions
- Who coordinates the Domain Name System?
- Domain Name Registrations
- Conclusion
Introduction
If you’re going to visit a website on the Internet you will have to navigate to an address where that site is located. That address (or URL) includes a domain name. Whatever you’re doing online, you will make use of a domain by some means or other.
As of October 2008, there have been more than 100 million active domain names registered with .com having a 75% market share with more than 76 million domains being registered under the .com extension.
But domains have become more than a simple way of navigating to a destination on the Internet: There is a valuable secondary market for domains and domains should be a part of any company’s corporate online marketing strategy.
What is a Domain Name?
So, what exactly is a domain name? The computers on the web are identified by a so-called IP address, but those IP addresses are made up of a long string of numbers that is very hard to remember or type in. Therefore, one had to find an easier way of addressing web servers and computers.
That is where domain names have come in: They replaced the complicated IP addresses as the common means of navigating to web pages, because they really are easy to remember.
The system of IP addresses is still in place, but domains function as a convenient mask that can be directly forwarded to any IP address on the Internet. It’s also important to note that every domain is unique so that it cannot be confused with another address, but you can easily point it to another online destination if you want to.
Domain Name Extensions
Domains consist of one or more keywords or phrases, so that they’re made up of real words instead of numbers that wouldn’t make much sense if you looked at them. Domains also have an extension that can be found at the very end of a domain name.
For example, Money.com is a domain name. As you see, it consists of a word and the extension. “Money” is the domain’s keyword, “.com” is its extension.
The extension is the so-called top-level domain (TLD) and the keyword is the sub-domain of the complete domain name. To stick with the example above: .com is the TLD and “money” is the sub-domain that has been registered under the .com top-level domain.
Other examples of DotCom domain names would be Google.com, NYTimes.com or Microsoft.com.
There are also other top-level domains beside the popular .com extension. You can read more about domain extensions in another article. (Go to: Domain Extension Guide)
Who coordinates the Domain Name System?
As I’ve said earlier, every domain is unique. With more than 100 million unique domains in use you can imagine that coordinating these names is a massive amount of work. The organization in charge of the coordination and functioning of the domain name system is ICANN, which is short for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
ICANN is a not-for-profit organization that was founded in 1998. It exists to make for the Internet to be a stable and secure environment. This includes the maintenance of the domain name space and coordination between the different domain name registries.
There are a couple of such domain registries around the world, each of which controls different TLDs. For instance, the VeriSign registry is in charge of the rather big .com and .net extensions.
The registries, therefore, store the data of all the domains registered under the TLD they operate. This means that VeriSign, for example, registers and keeps record of the creation date of .com domains, the expiration date, and the real-world address details and contact information of the individual domain name owners among other things.
Domain Name Registrations
This leads us to the topic of domain registrations. Every single domain has to be registered at the registry that is responsible for the respective top-level domain. Returning to the example given above, the domain name Money.com has been registered with VeriSign.
Nowadays, there are a couple of domain registrars where you can register domains as an end-user. The registrar functions as an intermediary between you and the actual domain registry. In addition, domain registrars usually offer a wide range of value-added services.
I won’t be going into too much detail about how to register domains here, because I’ll be covering that topic in another article, which you will also find as part of the domain guide on my site. (Link: How to Register Domain Names)
Conclusion
I tried to keep this article as simple as possible, so that it would only cover the very basics of the domain name system. Although it might not be necessary to know every bit about how the domain name system functions, it can definitely be useful to know as much as possible when making use of domains, especially if you are going to participate in the actual trade of domains on the aftermarket. That is why, if you are still new to this business, I always recommend to read as much as you can, to discuss domains on the various domain forums, and to not be afraid of asking questions if you have any. In my experience, there are many nice folks in this industry who are usually willing to share their extensive knowledge with you.
Related posts:
Recent Comments