Buy Domain Name – finding the right Domain Name
The right to use a domain name is delegated by domain name registrars which are accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization charged with overseeing the name and number systems of the Internet. In addition to ICANN, each top-level domain (TLD) is maintained and serviced technically by an administrative organization operating a registry. A registry is responsible for maintaining the database of names registered within the TLD it administers. The registry receives registration information from each domain name registrar authorized to assign names in the corresponding TLD and publishes the information using a special service, the whois protocol.
Registries and registrars usually charge an annual fee for the service of delegating a domain name to a user and providing a default set of name servers. Often this transaction is termed a sale or lease of the domain name, and the registrant may sometimes be called an “owner”, but no such legal relationship is actually associated with the transaction, only the exclusive right to use the domain name. More correctly, authorized users are known as “registrants” or as “domain holders”.
ICANN publishes the complete list of TLD registries and domain name registrars. Registrant information associated with domain names is maintained in an online database accessible with the WHOIS service. For most of the 250 country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), the domain registries maintain the WHOIS (Registrant, name servers, expiration dates, etc.) information.
Some domain name registries, often called network information centers (NIC), also function as registrars to end-users. The major generic top-level domain registries, such as for the COM, NET, ORG, INFO domains and others, use a registry-registrar model consisting of hundreds of domain name registrars (see lists at ICANN or VeriSign). In this method of management, the registry only manages the domain name database and the relationship with the registrars. The registrants (users of a domain name) are customers of the registrar, in some cases through additional layers of resellers.
In the process of registering a domain name and maintaining authority over the new name space created, registrars use several key pieces of information connected with a domain:
- Administrative contact. A registrant usually designates an administrative contact to manage the domain name. The administrative contact usually has the highest level of control over a domain. Management functions delegated to the administrative contacts may include management of all business information, such as name of record, postal address, and contact information of the official registrant of the domain and the obligation to conform to the requirements of the domain registry in order to retain the right to use a domain name. Furthermore the administrative contact installs additional contact information for technical and billing functions.
- Technical contact. The technical contact manages the name servers of a domain name. The functions of a technical contact include assuring conformance of the configurations of the domain name with the requirements of the domain registry, maintaining the domain zone records, and providing continuous functionality of the name servers (that leads to the accessibility of the domain name).
- Billing contact. The party responsible for receiving billing invoices from the domain name registrar and paying applicable fees.
- Name servers. Most registrars provide two or more name servers as part of the registration service. However, a registrant may specify its own authoritative name servers to host a domain’s resource records. The registrar’s policies govern the number of servers and the type of server information required. Some providers require a hostname and the corresponding IP address or just the hostname, which must be resolvable either in the new domain, or exist elsewhere. Based on traditional requirements (RFC 1034), typically a minimum of two servers is required.
Domain names are often seen in analogy to real estate in that (1) domain names are foundations on which a website (like a house or commercial building) can be built and (2) the highest “quality” domain names, like sought-after real estate, tend to carry significant value, usually due to their online brand-building potential, use in advertising, search engine optimization, and many other criteria.
A few companies have offered low-cost, below-cost or even cost-free domain registrations with a variety of models adopted to recoup the costs to the provider. These usually require that domains be hosted on their website within a framework or portal that includes advertising wrapped around the domain holder’s content, revenue from which allows the provider to recoup the costs. Domain registrations were free of charge when the DNS was new. A domain holder can give away or sell infinite number of subdomains under their domain name. For example, the owner of example.org could provide subdomains such as foo.example.org and foo.bar.example.org to interested parties.
Resale of domain names
The business of resale of previously registered domain names is known as the domain aftermarket. Various factors influence the perceived value or market value of a domain name.
As of 2004, according to Guinness World Records and MSNBC, the most expensive domain name sales on record were:[10]
- Business.com for $7.5 million in December 1999
- AsSeenOnTv.com for $5.1 million in January 2000
- Altavista.com for $3.3 million in August 1998
- Wine.com for $2.9 million in September 1999
- CreditCards.com for $2.75 million in July 2004
- Autos.com for $2.2 million in December 1999
The most recent confirmed sales were:
- Bank.ht for $1.4 million in March 2010
- Inn.im for $1.8 million in December 2009
Domain name confusion
Intercapping is often used to emphasize the meaning of a domain name. However, DNS names are case-insensitive, and some names may be misinterpreted in certain uses of capitalization. For example: Who Represents, a database of artists and agents, chose whorepresents.com, which can be misread as whore presents. Similarly, a therapists’ network is named therapistfinder.com. In such situations, the proper meaning may be clarified by use of hyphens in the domain name. For instance, Experts Exchange, a programmers’ discussion site, for a long time usedexpertsexchange.com, but ultimately changed the name to experts-exchange.com.
Leo Stoller threatened to sue the owners of StealThisEmail.com on the basis that, when read as stealthisemail.com, it infringed on claimed (but invalid) trademark rights to the word “stealth”.[11]
Use in web site hosting
A domain name is a component of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) used to access web sites, for example:
- URL: http://www.example.net/index.html
- Top-level domain name: .net
- Second-level domain name: example.net
- Host name: www.example.net
A domain name may point to multiple IP addresses to provide server redundancy for the services delivered. This is used for large, popular web sites. More commonly, however, one server at a given IP address may also host multiple web sites in different domains. Such address overloading enablesvirtual web hosting commonly used by large web hosting services to conserve IP address space. It is possible through a feature in the HTTP version 1.1 protocol, but not in HTTP 1.0, which requires that a request identifies the domain name being referenced.
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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