FAQ - Common Question Regarding Domain

• These are the common questions which may come to your mind regarding you domain.

  
  

  What is a domain?
  What is a domain name or a fully qualified domain name??
  What is a domain registration?
  What is a domain registrant?
  What is a domain registrar?
  What is a domain registry?
  How is a domain registered?
  What is a WHOIS record?
  What are the domain contacts?
  What are DNS servers?
  What is involved in making a domain "work"?
  How do I change the DNS servers, the admin contact etc?
  What is TLD?
  

  What is a domain?

  Strictly speaking, it is a name (See domain name below). But in common usage we are often referring to the most basic part of a group of domain names (e.g. baremetal.com being the domain behind the names www.baremetal.com and ftp.baremetal.com and http://baremetal.com/ ). In this sense it is more like an address (123 some street) for an infinitely expandable house (so you can just keep adding suite numbers :-).

  What is a domain name or a fully qualified domain name??

  It is a convenient name (or label) for some information that would be awkward to refer to directly. Usually that information is an IP address (which is 4 numbers between 0 and 255, e.g. 192.168.10.250).

  What is a domain registration?

  A domain registration is a 'right to use' for a given domain. Usually registrations cost money, and are sold by the year.

  What is a domain registrant?

  A registRANT is the organization that has purchased a domain registration.

  What is a domain registrar?

  A registRAR is an organization that sells domain registrations. Usually registrars have a contract with a registry, and often are certified by an organization. Some Registrars use resellers (like OpenSRS), so it may be hard to know who the registrar is. Some registrys sell direct, so the registrar and the registry may be the same organization.

  What is a domain registry?

  A registRY is the single organization that co-ordinates the domain registrations for a given top level domain (e.g. .com, .ca, or .info).

  How is a domain registered?

  Generally, the organization that wants to register a domain ( which might be an individual), contacts a registrar or visits a registrar's website, requests a particular domain name, provides some contact information, provides some other information (which may include a chosen password, and/or DNS servers, and usually payment information like a credit card number).

  The Registrar then sends the appropriate information/request to the registry to complete the registration.

  What is a WHOIS record?

  For most domains, much of the contact information provided during the registration process is put into a public whois record.

  (The .com domains are one extreme, with full info for the registrant, plus admin, technical, and billing contacts. At the other extreme is .co.uk which provides registrant name, the name of the registrar and the DNS servers.)

  What are the domain contacts?

  They are the people you contact if you have questions about the domain or trouble accessing it.

  Just as importantly, the admin contact is the authority allowed to make changes to the domain, and the billing contact (if there is one) is where the domain expiration messages go to.

  What are DNS servers?

  DNS servers are what actually makes a domain name work. By work I mean that they convert a text label to the information like IP addresses that the Internet is based on. (See 'What is a domain name'.)

  This is not to say that they handle e-mail, or serve web pages. Instead they direct web surfers and e-mail messages to the correct computers.

  What is involved in making a domain "work"?

  By "work" I am assuming that you mean setup a web page at your domain name, or enable e-mail addresses at your domain name.

  The short answer is that most people simply hire a hosting service to look after their needs, which means you simply need to get the DNS servers for the domain set to the DNS servers that the hosting service operates, and they do everything else.

  The long answer is that you need to get a computer (#1) configured to handle your e-mail and/or serve your web pages. You also need to get a computer (#2, a DNS server) configured to answer DNS lookups and refer requests to the first computer.

  How do I change the DNS servers, the admin contact etc?

  Generally, you go to the website of the registrar you registered the domain with.

  For names registered through Baremetal.com, use the 'Manage Domain' link on the 'Domains' menu.

  What is TLD?

  TLD simply expends to Top-Level Domain. To understand what TLD is, you should first know the basic parts called labels. Let's take the example of following web address, www.dealmakerdomain.com. In this case, 'www', 'dealmakerdomain', '.com' are three distinct labels of a domain name. Here the '.com' bit is the top level domain, while the part 'dealmakerdomain' (pointing to a working website) is called a hostname and 'www' is a sub domain of 'dealmakerdomain'.

  A top-level domain constitutes one of the domains at the highest level in the working of the Internet's hierarchy of the domain name system. The most prominent example of a TLD is the '.com' domain. There are different types of TLDs as defined by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the governing body of all things related to Internet domain names.

  gTLD?

  A gTLD a generic Top-Level Domain is a sub-set of TLDs that don't have any specific geographic relevance to their audience; neither do they have any affinity towards any specific country or group. Popular examples of gTLDs include '.com', '.net', '.info' and '.org' domains.

  Absolutely anyone can buy or register a gTLD domain name for ICANN-authorized domain register on a first-come first-serve basis, you don't need to show any proof while registering since there's nothing of special relevance to gTLDs. They are, one can say, the most common commodities of the domain name space.

  ccTLD?

  This is the special type of top-level domain, ccTLD or country code top-level domain, meant, as you can imagine, for identifying websites or organizations from specific countries. Where we saw no restrictions on the size of gTLDs above, rules specific to ccTLDs dictate them to be no longer then two characters long. You can see it in examples such as 'nike.in' (Nike's Indian operations) or 'google.cn' (Google's home page for people from china).

  The rules and requirements for purchasing a ccTLD differ from one country or region to another for e.g., anyone can just buy a '.in' domain name without showing any proof, whereas '.de' and '.ca' registrations for the German and Canadian ccTLD, respectively, require you to prove you belong to those nations.

  GeoTLD?

  A geographic top-level domain or GeoTLD is slightly similar in concept to the above-mentioned ccTLD. Just as ccTLDs are specific to countries, GeoTLDs are specific to border (yet specific) geographies, For example, '.asia' is an ideal example of a GeoTLD. So is the '.eu' for European Union - although .eu is classified as a ccTLD, it technically doesn't correspond to any particular country within the European Union. A whole list of GeoTLDs have been proposed by several domain registrars to ICANN, awaiting it's approval.

  sTLD?

  An interesting sub-set of TLDs, an sTLD or sponsored top-level domain is accredited towards certain private or government organizations which fund them. They can restrict and control the entry new domains registered under these special digital zones, Think of them, as private, invitation-only clubs.

  Prominent examples of sTLDs include '.gov' (The United States government), '.mil' (The United State Army), '.edu' (sponsored by EDUCATION), '.mobi' (sponsored by dotMobi), and so on and so forth. As you can see from the examples above, all the sTLDs have a sponsor or a group backing it, but some, such as '.edu' are for non profit use.