What is Domain Name ?



A name that identifies one or more IP addresses. For example, the domain name microsoft.com represents about a dozen IP addresses. Domain names are used in URLs to identify particular Web pages. For example, in the URL http://www.blogspot.com/, the domain name is blogspot.com.

Every domain name has a suffix that indicates which top level domain (TLD) it belongs to. There are only a limited number of such domains. For example:

# gov - Government agencies
# edu - Educational institutions
# org - Organizations (nonprofit)
# mil - Military
# com - commercial business
# net - Network organizations
# ca - Canada
# th - Thailand
# us - United States
# id - Indonesia
# it - italy
# ru - russia
# co.uk - commercial business united kingdom

Because the Internet is based on IP addresses, not domain names, every Web server requires a Domain Name System (DNS) server to translate domain names into IP addresses.

Domain Name



A domain name is an identification label that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet, based on the Domain Name System (DNS).

Domain names are used in various networking contexts and application-specific naming and addressing purposes. They are organized in subordinate levels (subdomains) of the DNS root domain, which is nameless. The first-level set of domain names are the top-level domains (TLDs), including the generic top-level domains (gTLDs), such as the prominent domains com, net and org, and the country code top-level domains (ccTLDs). Below these top-level domains in the DNS hierarchy are the second-level and third-level domain names that are typically open for reservation by end-users that wish to connect local area networks to the Internet, run web sites, or create other publicly accessible Internet resources. The registration of these domain names is usually administered by domain name registrars who sell their services to the public.

Individual Internet host computers use domain names as host identifiers, or hostnames. Hostnames are the leaf labels in the domain name system usually without further subordinate domain name space. Hostnames appear as a component in Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for Internet resources such as web sites (e.g., yourfavnames.org).

Domain names are also used as simple identification labels to indicate ownership or control of a resource. Such examples are the realm identifiers used in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the DomainKeys used to verify DNS domains in e-mail systems, and in many other Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs).

An important purpose of domain names is to provide easily recognizable and memorizable names to numerically addressed Internet resources. This abstraction allows any resource (e.g., website) to be moved to a different physical location in the address topology of the network, globally or locally in an intranet. Such a move usually requires changing the IP address of a resource and the corresponding translation of this IP address to and from its domain name.

This article primarily discusses the group of domain names that are offered by domain name registrars for registration by the public. The Domain Name System article discusses the technical facilities and infrastructure of the domain name space and the hostname article deals with specific information about the use of domain names as identifiers of network hosts.
Registered domain names can consist only of ASCII letters, numbers and the hyphen (-) - the same character set as all other hostnames. The full stop (dot, .) is used to separate DNS labels.

Since the presently permit character range does not allow for the use of other characters commonly found in non-English languages, and does not allow multi-byte characters necessary for most Asian languages, the Internationalized domain name (IDN) system has been developed and is now in testing stage for a group of top-level domains established for this purpose.

The underscore character is frequently used to ensure that a domain name is not recognized as a hostname, as with the use of SRV DNS server records, for example, although some older systems such as NetBIOS did allow it. To avoid confusion and for other reasons, domain names with underscores in them are sometimes used where hostnames are required.

Domain names are often referred to simply as domains and domain name registrants are frequently referred to as domain owners, although domain name registration with a registrar does not confer any legal ownership of the domain name, only an exclusive right of use.
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
Registered domain name: example.net

As a general rule, the IP address and the server name are interchangeable. For most Internet services, the server will not have any way to know which was used. However, the explosion of interest in the Web means that there are far more Web sites than servers. To accommodate this, the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) specifies that the client tells the server which name is being used. This way, one server with one IP address can provide different sites for different domain names. This feature goes under the name virtual hosting and is commonly used by web hosts.

For example, as referenced in RFC 2606 (Reserved Top Level DNS Names), the server at IP address 208.77.188.166 handles all of the following sites:

example.com
www.example.com
example.net
www.example.net
example.org
www.example.org

Top-level domains


The top-level domains (TLDs) are the highest level of domain names of the Internet. They form the DNS root zone of the hierarchical Domain Name System. Every domain name ends in a top-level or first-level domain label.

When the Domain Name System was created in the 1980s, the domain name space was divided into two main groups of domains.[1] The country code top-level domains (ccTLD) were primarily based on the two-character territory codes of ISO-3166 country abbreviations. In addition, a group of seven generic top-level domains (gTLD) was implemented which represented a set of categories of names and multi-organizations.[2] These were the domains GOV, EDU, COM, MIL, ORG, NET, and INT.

During the growth of the Internet, it became desirable to create additional generic top-level domains. As of June 2009, there are 20 generic top-level domains and 248 country code top-level domains.[3] In addtion, the ARPA domain serves technical purposes in the infrastructure of the Domain Name System.

During the 32nd International Public ICANN Meeting in Paris in 2008,[4] ICANN started a new process of TLD naming policy to take a "significant step forward on the introduction of new generic top-level domains." This program envisions the availability of many new or already proposed domains, as well a new application and implementation process.[5] Observers believed that the new rules could result in hundreds of new top-level domain to be registered.[6]

An annotated list of top-level domains in the root zone database is published at the IANA website at http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/

How to buy Domain at yahoo

First Go to http://domains.yahoo.com. If you do not already have a yahoo account you should sign up for one



put on the box your domain name then Click on search, if your domain name never register before, you can register it at yahoo. You also will receive a pop up with some tutorials on yahoo These tutorials show you how easy it is to build your own website with help from yahoo. You will also see the costs listed on the right hand side. The prices are very reasonable especially for those that are beginners.



Click on "sign up" on the right under the costs. This will bring up a page to help you find a domain name. Type in a name and click search. If your name is taken, it will give you suggestions of names that are similar to the one you put in. Click on the button with the name you have chosen and click continue. You will be directed to the yahoo sign in page. Put in your user name and password.



Put in your billing information for the transaction. Check to make sure everything is correct before continuing. Review and confirm your order. after 1 minutes, You will receive an email confirmation. Congratulations now you have domain name.