Saturday, 9 March 2013

Web Tech - What Is a Domain Name?

One of the basic things we talk about when we work online is the domain name, but many people simply want to know, "What is a domain name?" Because we use the term every day, we don't think to actually explain it. Here is the answer.
Every website on the Internet has to live on a computer somewhere. Every computer that is connected to the Internet is assigned a unique number, called an IP address, or "Internet protocol address". They are usually four sets of numbers separated by zeros. They look something like this:
628.158.154.28
When the Internet first started up, in order to get to the computer with the information you wanted, you had to type that number in. That was fine when most computers were on college campuses and most users were really smart people. Well, when the rest of us started to use the Internet, something had to be done. I know I have trouble remembering phone numbers, I doubt I'd want to also keep a bunch of IP addresses in my head.
To make it easier, once it looked like the general populace was going to go online, someone came up with the absolutely brilliant idea of creating a database of names that would then point to the correct IP address, so, instead of typing http://74.125.224.72/ into the browser, they could type in http://Google.com, which is a lot easier to remember.
The way that database works has gotten a lot more complex as the Internet has grown, but the basic idea is the same. You type in the domain name, that is sent to the lookup database, which then points you to the computer where the web site you're looking for lives, and everyone is happy.
There are several levels of domain names. The top level tells what kind of domain name it is and includes .com, .net, .info, .org, etc. This is also where the country codes come in, like .uk for the United Kingdom and.ca for Canada.
The person or group that came up with this great idea called them "Uniform Resources Locators" because they had to put a geeky spin on a very simple idea. That has been shortened to URL. So if someone asks you what the URL of your web site is, that's what they mean. It's another way of saying "Domain Name".
So, when you buy your domain name, then point it to your host, what you are doing is registering your domain name in that giant database, then telling it what computer to point people to when they use that name.
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Geoff_Hoff

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