Domain Name Terms and Definitions

Internet – The collective whole of networked computers across the globe. This includes the World Wide Web, email, FTP and other protocols.

World Wide Web – a portion of the Internet where websites reside. It is graphically capable and is supported by such languages as HTML and CSS.

URL – Universal/Uniform Resource locator – this is the complete unique address of a website on the World Wide Web. It is made up of three components: the protocol, the host name and the domain name. HTTP:// is the protocol. WWW is the host name. example.com is the domain name. Put them together to get: http://www.example.com

HTTP – HyperText transfer protocol. The protocol of the World Wide Web.

Domain Name – The registered domain name with the attached protocol: www.example.com

Top Level Domains (TLD) – term referring to all the suffixes on the end of the domain name proper: .COM, .NET, .ORG, .BIZ, .US, etc.

gTLD – generic top level domain names – those TLD’s that are non-country specific.

aero – gTLD that is reserved for members of the members of the aviation industy and is sponsored by Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques (SITA).

.biz – gTLD that is restricted to businesses. The domain must be used for business or commerical purpose. This gTLD is operated by NeuLevel, Inc.

.cat – gTLD that is reserved for the Catalan linguistic and cultural community and is sponsored by Fundació puntCat

.com – gTLD that is open to all individuals and businesses. It is the most popular TLD available. It is operated by VeriSign Global Registry Services.

.coop – gTLD that is reserved for various kinds of cooperative associations and is sponsored by Dot Cooperation LLC.

.edu – gTLD that is reserved for postsecondary institutions accredited by an agency on the U.S. Department of Education’s list of Nationally Recognized Accrediting Agencies and is registered only through Educause.

.gov – gTLD that is reserved exclusively for the United States Government. It is operated by the US General Services Administration.

.info – gTLD that is open to all individuals and businesses. It is operated by Afilias Limited.

.int – gTLD that is used only for registering organizations established by
international treaties between governments. It is operated by the IANA .int Domain Registry.

.jobs – gTLD that is reserved for human resource companies and human resource personnel. It is sponsored by Employ Media LLC.

.mil – gTLD that is reserved exclusively for the United States Military.
It is operated by the US DoD Network
Information Center.

.mobi – gTLD that that is reserved for consumers and providers of mobile products and services and is sponsored by mTLD Top Level Domain,
Ltd.

.museum – gTLD that is is reserved for museums and those in the museum profession. It is sponsored by the Museum Domain Management Association.

.name – gTLD that is reserved for personal, individual usage and is operated by Global Name Registry. .name email addresses are listed as firstname@lastname.name or lastname@firstname.name, while Web sites are listed as www.firstname.lastname.name

.net – gTLD that is operated by VeriSign Global Registry Services. Anyone can register a .NET domain.

.org – gTLD that is operated by Public Interest
Registry. while its purpose is to serve the non-profit community, all are eligible to register with .org.

.pro – gTLKD that is restricted to credentialed professionals (doctors, lawyers, accountants) and related entities and is operated by RegistryPro.

.travel – gTLD that is reserved for the travel industry and is sponsored by Tralliance Corporation.

Second level domains – the name portion of a domain. In example.com, .com is the top level domain and “example” is the second level domain.

Subdomains – These could be called third level domain names. They are attached as prefixes to the second level domain. In news.example.com, “news” is the subdomain.

Registered Domain Name – the second level and top level domain put together: example.com

Fully-Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) – A fully-qualified domain name includes all parts of a domain: the hostname or subdomain, the domain name, and the top-level domain. They are often seen in the URLs for Web sites (e.g.”http://www.example.com”).

ccTLD – < a href="http://www.iana.org/root-whois/index.html">country code Top Level Domain Names Examples: .us, .de, .es.

Domain Registrar – a company that registers domain names for individual users.

ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. This regulatory organization manages the DNS.

DNS – Domain Name System – The system by which domain names are translated into IP Addresses.

IP Address – a number representing the “address” of a particular computer or server. IP addresses are comprised of four numbers between 0 and 255, separated by periods (e.g. 216.168.224.69).

Propagation – The process where domain names are updated/added/deleted from the DNS. Once a domain name is registered it usually takes 2-3 days for it to be available on the Internet.

WHOIS – A central database which tracks all domain name/IP registrations. Each domain name registrar typically maintains its own version of a WHOIS database.

Domain Name Appraisal – The process of evaluating a domain name’s worth and market value.

Escrow – A third party service that will essentially hold on to the buyer’s payment when selling a domain name, thereby protecting both the buyer and seller.

Domain Name Parking – Domain registration services offer the ability to temporarily place a newly purchased name on their servers until a hosting plan is purchased. This is known as parking. Other services offer the capability of monetizing domain parking pages.

Registrant – The individual or organization that registers a specific domain name.

Administrative Contact – When a domain is registered an administrative contact is named. Typically, this is the individual who is purchasing the domain. However, in a company setting, this could be a named employee.

Billing Contact – When a domain is registered a billing contact is named. A billing contact is the person designated to receive the invoice for domain name registration and renewal fees. The billing contact should be in a position to ensure prompt payment of fees.

Technical Contact – The person responsible for handling the technical aspects of a domain. If a corporation is the registrar of the domain, this person might be an employee within the companies IT department.