Webupon

Most people have heard the terms domain or domain name, but how many people really know what a domain or domain name is?  The Internet uses Internet Protocol or IP as your address when you are on the Internet. My physical address might be 321 Washington Ave, St. Louis, Missouri but when I go on the Internet my address might be 192.0.2.235. IPs identifies computers and their structures consist of 4 octets expressed in dot decimal notation with dots separating the octets. If I said my web site was IP http://72.29.83.164/~h20hoco/h20/ or it I said it was http://h20ho.com, which one would be easier to remember? http://h20ho.com is not so easy to remember either, but I think you get the point as to why we have domain names, so that we can easily remember the IP address of the website.

What is a Domain Name?

A domain name is a series of letters and/or numbers that are used to identify one or more IPs.  The domain name google.com represents hundreds if not thousands of IP address. Most domains use only one IP or share an IP with other sites. Names are required to include a top level domain (TLD) name and a second level domain (SLD) name. Domains can have third, fourth and fifth level domain names, with virtually no limitations other than browser location bar maximum character limits. In the web address http://www.h20ho.comthe TLD is .com, the SLD is h20ho, and the third level domain name is www. The third level domain name ‘www’ is the host name of the World Wide Web server and this third level domain is also called a subdomain of h20ho.com. When you type in http://h20ho.com the content that you see is the same as if you typed http://www.h20ho.com, as the subdomain is pointing to the same content as the domain. Subdomains can have subdomains. In http://www.test.h20ho.com, www, the fourth level domain name is a subdomain of test and test is a subdomain of h20ho.com.

 What do Domain Name Extensions Mean?

Domain extensions are top level domains, that is, the .com, .net, .org or .asia which follows the second level domain name. There are different categories for extensions, Generic, Country, Sponsored, Reserved and Pseudo, to name a few. Some Generic extensions include .biz, .com, .info, .name, .net, .org and .pro.  Some sponsored extensions include .edu, .gov, .jobs and .travel. Country Code (ccTLD) extensions are two letter extensions such as .ca for Canada or .uk for United Kingdom.  

Who Owns A Specific Domain?

Ownership information of domain names is made publicly available to permit enforcement of trademark violation, consumer protection, to quickly resolve technical issues as well as other laws.  It is possible to register the domain privately, that is, in the name of a third party that accepts responsibility for the domain. Registrars provide this information to the public via whois servers. To find who owns a domain, go to your favorite search engine and type in ‘whois’, select a link until you find a site that allows you to enter domain names and search for owner details.

How Do You Register a Domain Name?

You need to use a domain name registrar to create and purchase a domain name. In the past there was only one registrar, but now there are many. You need to find a registrar that registers the TLD names you require; perhaps you need .uk or .ca. Accordingly, some registrars charge more or less than others, have discounts for multiple year or domain name purchases, while others will allow you to pay using PayPal and some won’t. All registrars will ask you for personal information which will be made public. If you submit wrong information and the registrar cannot contact you, they can resell your domain name and cancel your contract.

How Do Domain Names Work?

You just purchased studentstextbookexchange.com for $10 and when you type that domain name in your browser’s address bar, you go to a coming soon page that has options to buy domain names. This is the registrar’s page they use for parked or new domain names. They have entered their DNS servers as the computers associated with that domain name.

When a user from anywhere on earth types in your domain name their request is sent to a DNS server, usually their internet providers DNS server, to find out where to send your request, it reads the DNS server, it might say dns1.peuan.com and dns2.peuan.com as the computers associated to handle this domain name and sends your request to one of those DNS servers where it finds where to go.

This is great, but you just bought a web host package and they tell you that you need to point your domain name to dns1.webhost.com and dns2.webhost.com for you to use the web space. What you need to do is go to where you bought the domain name, your registrar, and edit your domain record. Login and go to the DNS section of your account and choose to modify the record. Change the DNS server’s data to the new data. If you currently have 4 servers and are change to two new ones, then delete all records except for the two new ones and update your record.  That’s it. DNS servers are crawling all the time synchronizing records across the internet, each DNS server is connected to at least two DNS servers, so records take no longer than 24 hours to update and I have seen them work as quick as 15 minutes.