Unraveling the mystery of domain names
by Bob Morse

(This article appeared in the Eureka Times-Standard, January 8, 2002)


Back when I taught Internet basics, explaining the world of domain names was relatively easy. But things have gotten more complicated as the web has expanded from a few networks of university-based computers to a global marketplace and information exchange.

The underlying basics remain the same, though. Places on the Internet are identified by a string of numbers called an I..P. (Internet Protocol) address. But the engineers who built the Internet infrastructure realized people wouldn’t relate well to a string of numbers. They created the Domain Name System which allows names to be assigned to I.P addresses. 64.177.236.245 is the current I.P. address for HumGuide.com.

This system does a couple things: It humanizes the Internet and it allows ‘places’ like HumGuide.com the freedom to move from computer to computer transparently. If I were to move the domain to another computer or host system, it would be assigned a new I.P. address, but no one would have to know that. The domain name system would automatically be updated, and a request for HumGuide.com would automatically be found on the correct host computer.

The domain name system was originally broken in to several top level domains (TLDs) which created the suffixes we have become familiar with: .com; .net; .org; .gov; .edu.; .mil. Outside the U.S., each country with an Internet connection has its own domain: .ca (Canada); .jp (Japan); etc.

The idea was simple. Commercial or business sites would be assigned to the .com domain, .net would be for networks like ISPs, non-profits would be given.org names, .gov was for government sites, .edu was reserved for higher educations sites and .mil for the military. But there wasn’t a system to ensure names were being registered by the appropriate people or organizations. Anyone could register any available name with a .com, .net, or .org suffix.

Once the web was seen as a commercially viable medium, everyone wanted a .com domain. Soon every viable name in the .com arena was gobbled up before many people even became aware of the World Wide Web. This created a whole new industry of buying and selling of domain names. It also created a great amount of frustration and legal wrangling over whom really has the right to own particular names.

In order to accommodate the demand for more domains. the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN - http://www.icann.org/ ), the designated controlling entity over domain name issues, finally approved a new set of TLDs. . Newly available names are .info and .biz. Others are in various stages of activation including .name, .museum, .coop, .aero and .pro. To read more about these,see http://www.internic.net/faqs/new-tlds.html.

What about those .tv and .ws domains you might have seen, http://ebertandroeper.tv for example? Well, those aren’t really new domains. They are country TLDs .tv is for Tuvalu and .ws is for Western Samoa. These countries have tried to parlay their TLDs and the need for more domains names into cash for their treasuries.

Anyone can register a .tv or .ws domain.

So what does this mean to you? It means if you don’t have a .com or .net name you really like, you might try checking out the .info or .biz name for possibilities. Or if those don’t fit you could wait until one of the other TLDs becomes fully operational. If you do have a domain and wish to protect your online identity, you might want to register the same name with different TLDs.

It also may mean eventually the importance of having a .com address for business will diminish over time and the market for buying and selling domains will drop in value. This has happened already to some extent but some domain names are still commanding considerable sums. Of course with the recent collapse of so many dot com ventures, no domains names are coming close to the astronomical sale figures we had seen in the past.

As the Internet continues to expand, the naming system must change to accommodate the growth. How the system changes and who controls it should be of vital interest to anyone with a stake in the global network.