Welcome To Verinchee’s Designs

What is domain name?

A domain name is an online identification label that an individual or an organization may opt for. Domain names are hostnames that identify Internet Protocol (IP) resources such as web sites. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System (DNS).

Domain names are used in various networking contexts and application-specific naming and addressing purposes. They are organized as sub-domains and main domains. The first-level set of domain names are the top-level domains (TLDs). Below these top-level domains in the DNS hierarchy are the second-level domain names. The registration of these domain names is usually administered by domain name registrars who sell their services to the public.

An important purpose of domain names is to provide easily recognizable and memorizable names to numerically addressed Internet resources. This abstraction allows any resource (e.g., website) to be moved to a different physical location in the address topology of the network, globally or locally in an internet. Such a move usually requires changing the IP address of a resource and the corresponding translation of this IP address to and from its domain name.

Domain names are often referred to simply as domains and domain name registrants are frequently referred to as domain owners, although domain name registration with a registrar does not confer any legal ownership of the domain name, only an exclusive right of use.

A third level can be defined to identify a particular host server at the Internet address. In our example, "www" is the name of the server that handles Internet requests. (A second server might be called "www2.") A third level of domain name is not required. For example, the fully-qualified domain name could have been "abc.com" and the server assumed.

Sub domain levels can be used. For example, you could have "www.xyz.abc.com." Together, "www.abc.com" constitutes a fully-qualified domain name.

Second-level domain names must be unique on the Internet and registered with one of the ICANN-accredited registrars for the COM, NET, and ORG top-level domains. Where appropriate, a top-level domain name can be geographic. (Currently, most non-U.S. domain names use a top-level domain name based on the country the server is in.) To register a US geographic domain name or a domain name under a country code, see an appropriate registrar.

On the Web, the domain name is that part of the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that tells a domain name server using the domain name system (DNS) whether and where to forward a request for a Web page. The domain name is mapped to an IP address (which represents a physical point on the Internet).

More than one domain name can be mapped to the same Internet address. This allows multiple individuals, businesses, and organizations to have separate Internet identities while sharing the same Internet server.

To see the IP address for a domain name, (ping).

It may be worth noting that the domain name system contains an even higher level of domain than the top-level domain. The highest level is the root domain, which would be represented by a single dot (just as in many hierarchical file systems, a root directory is represented by a "/") if it were ever used. If the dot for the root domain were shown in the URL, it would be to the right of the top-level domain name. However, the dot is assumed to be there, but never shown.