{"id":2579,"date":"2016-06-10T10:55:58","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T14:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/local.brightwhiz\/?p=2579"},"modified":"2024-02-20T10:41:49","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T07:41:49","slug":"domain-names-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/local.brightwhiz\/domain-names-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"How Internet Domain Names Work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ah! Domain Names. Where do we start? Imagine you were to ask a guys name and like Finn in the movie Star Wars Episode 8: The Force Awakens you get the answer FN-2187. That would be really awkward. Take another scenario where you flag down a cab and when the driver asks for the directions you spew out a 16 digit number at best. This would get really complicated for both of you.<\/p>\n<p>Domain Names tend to make this sort of situation more palatable when it comes to finding resources, services and so on over the internet based <a href=\"\/\/local.brightwhiz\/tag\/networking\/\">networks<\/a>.<!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>In a Nutshell, What is a Domain Name?<\/h2>\n<p>A domain name is an string of human readable character that is used to define a region of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the <a href=\"\/\/local.brightwhiz\/tag\/internet\/\">Internet<\/a> and registered in the Domain Name System (<a href=\"\/\/local.brightwhiz\/tag\/dns\/\">DNS<\/a>). Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of these Domain Name Systems.<\/p>\n<p>Domain names are usually managed by administrative bodies. One such body is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) which manages what we call top-level domain. To understand what top-level domains are we have to understand what these levels are.<\/p>\n<h2>What are Domain Levels?<\/h2>\n<p>Level domains can also be termed as Sub-domains when you start linking other parts within the domain name syntax. Domain names can contain one or more sections separated by a dot. These sections are also called labels. So <strong>example.com<\/strong> is a domain name with two sections. The rightmost section (com) is what can be described as the top-level domain. It is this top level domain the ICANN administers.<\/p>\n<h2>Types of Domain Names<\/h2>\n<p>There are several groups of a top-level domain which are further managed by different bodies under ICANN. To mention them we have infrastructure top-level domain (ARPA) managed by IANA. Then there are the generic top-level domains (gTLD) which are top-level domains with three or more characters such as gov, edu, com, mil, org, info and net among others.<\/p>\n<p>Then there are restricted generic top-level domains (gTLD)which are managed by official ICANN accredited registrars. Sponsored top-level domains (sTLD) are managed, proposed and sponsored by private agencies or organizations. They are managed by official ICANN accredited registrars.<\/p>\n<p>Country-code top-level domains (ccTLD) are two-letter domains set up for countries or territories. In most cases, these domains share the same two-letter ISO 3166 code for that country or territory.<\/p>\n<p>Internationalized country code top-level domains (IDN ccTLD)are domains set up in non-Latin character sets such as Arabic, Chinese, and Hebrew among others. Finally, Test top-level domains (TLD) are domains set up under .test for testing purposes and are generally not available to the general public just yet.<\/p>\n<p>Again some domain names are reserved and cannot be used. These are <strong>example<\/strong> which is reserved for use in examples. <strong>invalid<\/strong> is reserved for use in invalid domain names. We then have <strong>localhost<\/strong> which is reserved to avoid conflict with the traditional use of <strong>localhost<\/strong> the hostname. Finally <strong>test<\/strong> is reserved for use in test scenarios.<\/p>\n<p>You can find a list of the top level domains here. Now to understand how domain names actually work to get you to the website you are looking for you can <a href=\"\/\/local.brightwhiz\/dns-domain-name-system\/\">visit this article<\/a> which talks more about the Domain Name System it in detail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ah! Domain Names. Where do we start? Imagine you were to ask a guys name and like Finn in the movie Star Wars Episode 8: The Force Awakens you get&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,23,16],"tags":[106,202,219,320,397,543,635,643],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Domain Names Explained in Three Minutes or Less<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How well do you understand the domain names you use every day to access websites, when you type emails and use other online services\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/local.brightwhiz\/domain-names-explained\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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