Internet Domain Names

One of the more confusing aspects of the Internet is the handling of Internet Domain Names (or simply "domains").

In this section, you will find information about:

Domain Names and IP Addresses

The reason we have domains is pretty stright forward. Computers using TCP/IP to communicate use an IP number to determine the address of the destination computer. The most commonly user version of these IP numbers uses four numbers between 0 and 255 separated by dots. e.g. 192.168.0.233 - you have probably seen these numbers in places. The newer version of IP number uses 16 of these numbes spearared by dots.

Becuase, as humans, it is much harder to remember an arbitrary 4 numbers than it is to remember some resemblance to a meaningful name, we use the Domain Name System (DNS) to translate between human-readable names and the IP addresses that computers use. All in all, this works pretty well.

So when you want to go to www.yahoo.com, the computer actually wants to find the machine with the address 216.115.102.77 - and it uses the DNS to work this number out.

Domain Name Structure

The use of IP numbers is structured, but only in a way so that computer can find other computers (by the use of routing algorithms - but that's another subject). Domain names are arranged in a different structure that is much more logical for humans.

Traditionally (because there have been changes and extentions recently that aren't finalized so I won't bother explaining them), the domain name structure is in an organizaed heirachy starting at the "root" domain at the most general and breaking down into more specific categories by allocating "sub-domains". Every domain is a sub-domain of one "parent" domain except the root domain.

The root domain used to be run by IANA (Internet Assigned Names Authority), but in recent years has been moved to the juristiction of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). These are theoretically not-for-profit organizations that manage the allocation to the next level of domains called "Top Level Domains" or TLD's.

There were originally 7 Generic TLD's (gTLD's) and one TLD for each country (ccTLD's). The gTLD's were .com .org .net .gov .mil .edu and .int that were suppoed to represent Commercial, Organizations, Network Providers, Government, Military, Education and International Organizations respectively. In the case of each country, the ISO "Country Code" (such as .au for Australia) was set as the top level domain for that country.

A "responsible person or organization" was delegated the duty to maintaing these TLD's and handling registrations of other people under that domain.

So, for example, if you were a commercial company called Widgets Inc., it would be reasonable to assume that you would approach the .com registrar and request the domain name widgets.com. Assuming no other company had previously requested that domain name, you would normally be allocated the control of it. There is usually a "registration fee" associated with the registering of the domain name which is normally merely to cover the expenses of the registrar in maintaining their database of names.

When you want a domain name for yourself, you have to register the domain name with the appropraite registrar for the domain name you want.

In Australia, we recommend that you apply for a .au address to indicate to people that you are Australian. the administrators of the .au domain space have decided that they will split the .au space into fixed categories similar to the gTLD allocation, and therefore the is a .gov.au, .edu.au, .org.au and.com.au domain space to suitably place you or your organization into a logical heirachy. It is at the domain administrator's discretion as to how the domain is delegated.

Therefore, Paradigm IT Consulting has made the logical choice to apply for the domain name "ParadigmIT" in the .com.au domain space. Because ParadigmIT is a reasonable representation of the company name, we are a commercial company (.com) operating in Australia (.au). Resulting in ParadigmIT.com.au

You should be able to see the similarities here between Domain addresses and normal street addresses. The heirachy is designed to describe the registrant from most specific to least specific in the heriachy as you read the name from left to right.

Registering a Domain Name

As described above, to use a domain name of your own, you must register it with the appropriate registrar.

AUNIC (AU Network Information Center) is a good place to start for any of the .au domains. If you're after a registration from gTLD domain registrar, there are plenty to choose from and INWW (Internet Names WorldWide) are one that allows a significant amount of flexibility while being comeptitive on price.

Registering a domain name only reserves the use of the domain name for you. Most domain administrators look upon domain delegation as a charge or responsibility for the domain space rather than one of ownership or rights.

Registering a domain is only reserving it for use. In order to use a domain, you must then host it somewhere and configure your name space

Hosting a Domain Name

Once the domain name is registered, you will need at least two differnet places on the Internet to "host" the domain. Hosting the domain means that there is a fixed location where details about the domain can be found - this includes the addresses of all machines that you are using within your domain space.

Most ISP's offer domain hosting services. Sometimes these are incorporated into your connection fee, sometimes they are listed and paid for as a separate service. There are also lots of third-party domain hosters available and here is what they actually have to do, so keep it in mind when paying for this service:

• Arrange "Delegation" of the domain name from from the parent domain
• Be running a DNS server
• Configure the DNS server to host your domain
• Have access to a secondary DNS server
• Configure the secondary DNS server to point to the primary
• Configure the hosts in your domain (WWW, Mail, etc)
  

Total time this would take should be less than 1 hour and it doesn't need to be updated unless something changes - which is quite rare. Of course, the mainteance and bandwidth on a permanent connection to the Internet and running that machine do incurr indirect costs, so this should be factored in.

If you have your own permanent Internet connection, you can host your own domain and avoid any of these costs in the future after setting it up once.