| What is a domain name? |
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The Domain Name System: the phone directory of the Internet.
A domain name serves as a user friendly nickname to help you find (and remember) the location of points of interest on the Internet. Humans are pretty good at remembering things like names, but what if you had to remember a string of numbers in order to find your favorite web sites? Instead of typing http://www.google.com, what if you had to remember http://64.233.187.99 every time you needed to do a search? When you type in a web address that uses a domain name, a lot of things take place behind the scenes to get your browser connected to the web server which hosts the site you are interested in. In a nutshell, your computer takes the domain name, talks to a server called a Domain Name Server (or DNS server for short) and asks it, "What is the IP address of the web server which hosts www.google.com?". The DNS server replies with the IP address and armed with this information, your computer connects directly to the web server, pulls down the code and displays it on your screen as a web page. In short, domain names are part of a larger Domain Name System which essentially acts as the phone book for the Internet. |