What is Domain Name?

Posted by: TipBisnis.org in Domain Names | July 26th, 2008

Quick answer: A domain name is the computers name that is registered on the internet. The domain name is a unique name that identifies a device on the internet. Domain names always have 2 or more parts separated by dots – the first part is the specific machine and sub-network and the part on the right is the server and type of server.

See this example:

Domain name	specific	server	ext.	type
www.tipbisnis.org	www	tipbisnis	org	TLD
mail.tipbisnis.org	mail	tipbisnis	org	Sub Domain
wp.theme.tipbisnis.org	wp.theme	tipbisnis	org	Sub Domain

that last example has the specific information split into a computer name and a subnetwork name.

This is actually an old approach to naming. The new approach has added a 2 letter abbreviation of the country to the end of the url. For now there is no plan to re-assign all of the domain names that did not include this country code. For example, www.hisdomain.co.uk, www.hisdomain.com.cn, etc.

It is possible for a single computer to have more than one domain name. This allows for serving several web sites – making each appear to be running on an individual machine.

Usually all of the computers, printer, and other devices on a given network have the same right-hand portion of their domain names. This helps the network administrator keep track of the machines and helps trace problems.

Simple Form: if you are using web browser, ie: Internet Explorer or Safari, and type http://www.tipbisnis.org, then, your computer will try to lookup computer named tipbisnis.org, for web service, via http port (usualy 80 or 8080).

Web service (www) are the most requested by browser, that’s way we call them web server. Another popular service are FTP, SMTP, etc.