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Domain names are relatively straightforward! Or at least that’s the theory!! The domain name is also, but technically not quiet correct, known as the website address. Using an ISP’s domain name can look amateurish in an e-mail addresses, it is much more so with websites, giving the impression of hanging on another’s coat tails. The only exception being when a firm wants to re-inforce a local or professional affiliation by appearing as part of an existing site dedicated to a region or association. Even in such cases autonomy and continuity are better assured by having one’s own domain and merely using a page on the third party’s site to point users toward it. Domains are classified according to their endings or “suffixes”. As a commercial organisation a company will almost certainly want a domain ending in .com or .co.uk. Other endings such as .biz and .ltd.uk are at least to date, insufficiently familiar to users, meaning the name can be too readily misremembered. Of the two desirable suffixes, .com is preferable for business with international activities, and arguably gives the impression of a bigger organisation, whilst .co.uk helps reassure users on the largely American-dominated web that they are indeed dealing with a UK firm. The part of the domain name before the suffix will usually by the firms trading name, provided of course that the domain name has not already been registered, (which is increasingly likely these days). If the name is very long an abbreviation may be considered. Domain names are not case sensitive. The actual registration of a domain name is a straightforward process that can be done online, either through your ISP or better still through a dedicated registration service company such as Discount Domains Ltd (http://www.discountdomainsuk.com). Renewal fees must be paid, typically every two years. Checking if a domain name is freely available is very straightforward as most domain registration services provide a WHOIS service, as the name suggest, this checks the ownership details of a domain, note however that such services normally run 48 hours behind actual registrations. Moving ISP’s can save money, however it may take time and incur extra charges. Pricing in the domain name registration industry have fallen considerably over recent years and a domain name typically now costs from $15 for two years registration. Once your domain name is registered, you can either leave the domain name “parked” awaiting future use, or point it at a website, this is usually achieved by changing the Domain Name Server, or DNS settings on the domain to point at hosting company where your website is located. Almost all registration services offer a free user control panel to change these settings. Web hosting is the provision of space on a web server to publish a web site. There are numerous hosting companies in the market, and most domain registration services also offer a hosting solution. Prices vary but $100 per annum should be sufficient for most business needs. (C) Clare Lawrence 11th May 2004 About The Author Clare Lawrence is CEO of Discount Domains Ltd - A leading UK provider of Domain name registration and Web Hosting services. Please feel free to re-publish this article provided this reference box remains together with a hyperlink to http://www.discountdomainsuk.com Clare can also be contacted on clare@discountdomainsuk.com. Tags: dns, domain names, domain registry, domains, internet, ip address, networking, website address
In this article we will cover the basics of what a domain name is, how they work and why you need to have at least one. I am going to try and avoid complicated computer terms and stick to explanations that should be easily understood by someone without a computer science degree. What is a Domain Name? Before we can go into what a domain name is I’m going to tell you why we need them as the answers compliment each other. The Internet is just a really big collection of connected computers (a network). For the purpose of explaining domain names you can think of the Internet a bit like the phone system and just like the phone system every computer on the Internet has it’s own phone number except an Internet phone number is called an IP addresses. This address is made up of up to 12 digits in the form 123.123.123.123, computers use these IP addresses to send information to each other over the Internet. When the Internet was first created it quickly became clear that these IP addresses were not easy to remember and another method was need to make these addresses more human friendly. The solution to this was the Domain Name System (DNS). Basically the DNS is a really really big phone book for computers. When you type a web site address into your web browser it checks the DNS for that website name and finds the IP address. Once it has the IP address it can then send a message to that computer and ask it for the web page you wanted. Ok so you know a domain name is part of a web site address but which part? Lets look at a website address so we can identify and discuss what bit of it is a domain name. http://www.itxcel.com/index.html The above address is the home page of the itXcel web site. It can be split into 3 main parts. The first part is http:// this just tells your web browser what kind of information it is going to get and how to get it. The last part is /index.html this is name of the files on the remote computer that you want your browser to get. The bit in the middle www.itxcel.com is a domain name. This is the name that your computer sends to the DNS to get back the IP address. So you know what a domain name is and that there is a phone book called the DNS to change your easy to remember domain name into an IP address that you computer can understand. The Internet phone book (DNS) is special in that everyone on the Internet needs to be able to use it. This makes the DNS very very big (100+ million addresses big). Due to the size of this phone book it needed to have a carefully organised and managed structure. Domain names themselves are split into different levels like a hierarchy. The DNS system uses this hierarchy to search the DNS for the IP address of the domain name it is trying to find. The last bit of a domain, in the previous example the com part is called the top level domain. There are a large selection of top level domains like com, net, org and info. There are also very similar endings called country level domains like uk and de. Each of the top level and country level domains are managed by a different organization, sometimes these are companies or non profit organizations and sometimes governments. In the domain business these organisations are referred to as the registries. Each registry looks after it’s own part of the domain name system. If you decide you want to use a domain name in the top level domain com, like mycompany.com you would have to have this name assigned by the registry that manages that top level domain (for .com a US company called VeriSign). The process of being assigned a domain name is called domain registration. Domain registration is more like a lease than a purchase. You are renting the second level domain (the mycompany bit) from Verisign for a specific amount of time normally between 1 and 10 years at a time. Most of the organizations that allow you to register a second level domain charge a fee for each year that you register the domain for. With almost all domain names you are also given the option to renew your registration (lease) when it is close to running out (expiring). Once you have registered a second level domain you are free to create as many third level domains (sometimes called sub domains) as you like. In our previous example the www is a sub domain of itxcel.com. Most of the registries that manage these top level domain names do not allow individuals or businesses to register domains directly with them. To register a domain you need to use a company like itXcel. We act as a registrar and send all the required information and the registration fee to the registry. Registrars are useful as they hide the differences that exist in each of the registries from the customer and provide a simple step by step process for registering a domain. A registrar also allows you to manage and track all your domains from one place rather than having to deal with a different company for each top level domain. OK so I know what a domain name is, Why do need one? Can you image what a nightmare it would be if you had an email address like myname@123.246.128.255 or a web site address http://123.246.128.255/? One of the important points about registering a domain is that once done you have an exclusive right to use that domain for as long as you keep the domain registered in your name. If you do not renew a domain at the end of it’s registration period it will again become available for registration by someone else. For this reason even if you don’t want or need a web site at the moment, it’s still a good idea to register a domain as soon as possible. Just imagine if your competition registered the domain name of your company or product. Although there is a process in place to retrieve these domain it can be long and complicated. It is definitely simpler to spend a little money up front to secure your chosen domain names. About The Author Ewan Bain is the general manager at itXcel Internet Limited - Based in the UK itXcel provide Internet services, including domain name registration and web site hosting to small to medium sized businesses and home users. To find out what domains are available and to quickly and cheaply register them visit http://www.itxcel.com now and enter your desired name in the domain search box. For further information please visit our website. Tags: domain, domain names, domain registry, ip addressing, web design, web development, websites
Communications and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran has -as Hindustan Times reports-some advice for Indian patriots: use in-domains for Websites and e-mail IDs to popularise Indian identity in the world. With India emerging as a global “labor” for IT, Indian companies should change the domain names of their Websites and e-mail IDs to in-domains, just like other countries. “In every part of the world, the practice has been to use the short form of the respective countries at the end of the domain names by companies and individuals,” the minister said during his first speech as IT Minister. “During my trips abroad, I have always noticed that people have their e-mail IDs with the initials of their country in the end. For instance, in Britain, the Websites or e-mail IDs have at the end .co.uk, in Singapore it is .co.sg, in Japan it is .jp, in Hong Kong it is .hk and even in Pakistan they have .co.pk. But in India, we are still reluctant to use .co.in or .in. Why this hesitation?”, Dayanidhi Maran has asked in an interview. Therefore the minister has been urging upon Indian captains of industry, heads of organisations and individuals to switch over to use in-domains in order to indicate that their website or e-mail ID originates from India. “I have made this appeal to representatives of the IT industry here, which is considered the IT capital of India. Once the tech industry migrates to this new identity, it will set a trend for the rest to follow in letter and spirit. They need to change the domain names of their companies or organisations by registering their Websites or mail IDs only once for identifying themselves with their motherland,” Maran says. “Though we are not making it mandatory, we are coming out with a number of schemes for Indian companies or organisations to make this transition soon. The ministry will shortly come out with an action plan to enable a smooth migration to either .co.in or .in,” the IT minister explains. The Indian IT-minister seems to be aware, that it is very bureaucratic in the moment to register in-domains. Indian companies need a lot of paperwork in order to get a domain at co.in , .in itself is reserved for Indian providers, not open to all Indian companies. “Foreign companies”, explains Hans-Peter Oswald, the CEO of ICANN Registrar Secura (https://www.domainregistry.de/in-domain.html), ,,can only register the own name at .gen.in.” About The Author Hans Peter Oswald https://www.domainregistry.de/in-domain.html, https://www.domainregistry.de/in-domain.html; secura@domainregistry.de Tags: domain registration, domain registry, domains, indian domains, indians, ip addresses
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