Domain Name

• Domain names were created as a result of the the lack of excitement surrounding IP Addresses and the fact that they are not very easy to remember.
• IP Addresses are translated into domain names using the Domain Name System or DNS.
• The meaning of the term “domain name” generally refers to a name that identifies a computer or computers on the internet. These names appear as a component of a Web site’s URL, e.g. wikipedia.org. This type of domain name is also called a hostname.
• They are sometimes colloquially (and incorrectly) referred to by marketers as “web addresses”.
• The most common types of domain names are hostnames that provide more memorable names to stand in for numeric IP addresses.
• By allowing the use of unique alphabetical addresses instead of numeric ones, domain names allow Internet users to more easily find and communicate with web sites and other server-based services.
• Hostnames are restricted to the ASCII letters “a” through “z” (case-insensitive), the digits “0” through “9”, and the hyphen, with some other restrictions. Registrars restrict the domains to valid hostnames, since, otherwise, they would be useless.
• ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has overall responsibility for managing the DNS.

The following example illustrates the difference between a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and a domain name:

• URL: http://www.example.net/index.html
• Domain name: www.example.net

There are many websites one can use to register a domain name. One such website is CheapDomains