domain names : Java Glossary

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domain names
On the Internet, you can access computers by number (IP (Internet Protocol) e.g. http://65.110.21.43 ) or by name e.g. mindprod.com. The name without any www or other prefix is called the domain name. This essay on domain names will tell you more than you wanted to know about domain names, ownership rights, DNS (Domain Name Service), TLDs (Top Level Domains) TLD (Top Level Domain) s), country code TLD s, domain name speculation, resources for buying domain names, wet blanket caveats and how to buy a domain name without a broker.
Introduction Country Codes
Ownership Rights Domain Name Format
Whois Speculation
Who Owns This IP? Where to Buy Domain Names
IP From a Domain Name Wet Blanket Caveats
Owner From a Domain Without A Broker
Domain/IP Location New TLDs
Face IP Global Domains
DNS Regional Domains
TLDs Links

Introduction

This essay that will tell you more than you wanted to know about domain names, ownership rights, DNS, TLDs TLD s), country code TLD s, domain name speculation, resources for buying domain names, wet blanket caveats and how to buy a domain name without a broker.

Ownership Rights

When you own a name such as mindprod.com you own world wide rights to it, You are absolute ruler of that realm/domain and can choose to carve it up with whatever dot prefixes you choose, e.g. www.mindprod.com, ftp.mindprod.com, products.mindprod.com or even silly.mindprod.com, You own exclusive right to all possible prefixes including all the mail addresses, e.g. . Domain names are not case-sensitive, so that if you own mindprod.com you also automatically own mindprod.com as well. However, you do not necessarily own the rights to other prefixes not separated by a dot, e.g. blowyourmindprod.com. You could buy them separately of course. Further, you do not necessarily own that name with other TLD suffixes, e.g. mindprod.org or mindprod.ca. Further, you do not own variants with dashes, e.g. mind-prod.com. You have to register and pay for, all those separately. If you don’t some remora might register them and hold them ransom. This is both insanity and a ripoff. Welcome to planet earth.

Whois

There are five common questions about domain names and IP you may have:

  1. Who owns this IP?
  2. I know the domain name. What IP does it map so I can put an entry in my hosts. file.
  3. Who owns this domain name?
  4. Where on the planet is this IP broadcasting from?
  5. What is my face IP?
  6. Is this server available/up?

1. Who Owns This IP?

For the first question, who owns or is currently using this IP, see IP lookup services

2. Finding the IP From a Domain Name

For the second question, finding the IP given the domain name, you need an DNS lookup service:

3. Finding out who owns a Domain

For the third question (who owns this domain) use one of these whois services:

You might think it sufficient for to check if a domain name is taken to simply point your browser to www.xxxxx.com and see if you get a 404 not found error. However, the name may be taken, with no webserver set up, so the name would appear to be free when it was actually taken.

4. Finding out Where a Domain/IP is Located

For third question (where is the domain located) use one of these IP locator services:

5. Finding our Your Face IP

Ways of Finding Your Face IP
Logo Link Notes
moose Your face IP :[ 18.97.14.84] Your face IP is displayed at the bottom of every page of this website. I do this with SSI (Server Side Includes).
IPChicken logo IPchicken.com tells your face ip and which ports you have open. They also tell you your face name, e.g. your URL (Uniform Resource Locator) on the web, possibly temporarily assigned for your connection. It might look something like this S0106991195576dda.gv.shawcable.net or d207-81-138-97.bchsia.telus.net That is not my real one. I don’t want to encourage hackers.
Dyn logo checkip.dyndns.org:8245/ Offers many other services as well.
WhatIsMyIPAddress logo WhatIsMyIPAddress.com has many annoying ads you must close to discover the answer.
In a Servlet you can use javax.servlet. ServletRequest. getRemotePort().
The face ip is different from the IP of your computer on the LAN (Local Area Network). An IP of a computer on a LAN is typically something like 192.168.2.7. The router has two ips, one it talks to the computers on the lan often 192.168.2.1 and one it uses to talk to the outside world, dynamically assigned by the ISP using DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol).

6. Is this server available/up?

Available Applet is a whoIs that tells you if a server is available/up. It also tells you the IP given the host or the host given the IP.

WhatIsMyIP has a number of IP tools for programmers.

Available Applet

is a whoIs that tells you if a server is available/up. It also tells you the IP given the host or the host given the IP.

WhatIsMyIP has a number of IP tools for programmers.

DNS

There are computers spread all over the Internet called DNS DNS servers. They will automatically look up a name for you and give you the equivalent numeric IP. The process is analogous to looking up somone’s name in an electronic phone book to find out their phone number. This happens completely automatically whenever you key a website name into your browser or FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client. You may have several computers serving your domain. Each would have its own separate IP and would serve some subset of the possible prefixes, e.g. one computer might handle ftp.mindprod.com where another would handle www.mindprod.com. The DNS system considers the name prefixes as well as the domain name when looking up an IP.

TLD s

The most common domains end in .com which means commercial. This suffix is called the TLD . Other common ones are .org organisation, .edu educational institution, .gov government, .net network and .mil military. Short .com names are considered the most prestigious. They are also easiest for customers to remember.

The official TLDs are: .aero .biz .coop .com .edu .gov .info .mil .museum .name .net .org .pro

The unofficial TLDs are: .cam .mp3 .agent .art .arts .asia .auction .aus .bank .cam .chat .church .club .coop .corp .dds .design .dns2go .e .email .exp .fam .family .faq .fed .film .firm .free .fun .g .game .games .gay .ger .globe .gmbh .golf .gov .help .hola .i .inc .int .jpn .k12 .kids .law .learn .llb .llc .llp .lnx .love .ltd .mag .mail .med .media .mp3 .netz .nic .nom .npo .per .pol .prices .radio .rsc .school .scifi .sea .service .sex .shop .sky .soc .space .sport .tech .tour .travel .usvi .video .web .wine .wir .wired .zine .zoo

Then there are the two letter country codes: .ac .ad .ae .af .ag .ai .al .am .an .ao .aq .ar .as .at .au .aw .ax .az .ba .bb .bd .be .bf .bg .bh .bi .bj .bm .bn .bo .br .bs .bt .bv .bw .by .bz .ca .cc .cd .cf .cg .ch .ci .ck .cl .cm .cn .co .cr .cs .cu .cv .cx .cy .cz .de .dj .dk .dm .do .dz .ec .ee .eg .eh .er .es .et .fi .fj .fk .fm .fo .fr .fx .ga .gb .gd .ge .gf .gg .gh .gi .gl .gm .gn .gp .gq .gr .gs .gt .gu .gw .gy .hk .hm .hn .hr .ht .hu .id .ie .il .im .in .io .iq .ir .is .it .je .jm .jo .jp .ke .kg .kh .ki .km .kn .kp .kr .kw .ky .kz .la .lb .lc .li .lk .lr .ls .lt .lu .lv .ly .ma .mc .md .mg .mh .mk .ml .mm .mn .mo .mp .mq .mr .ms .mt .mu .mv .mw .mx .my .mz .na .nc .ne .nf .ng .ni .nl .no .np .nr .nu .nz .om .pa .pe .pf .pg .ph .pk .pl .pm .pn .pr .ps .pt .pw .py .qa .re .ro .ru .rw .sa .sb .sc .sd .se .sg .sh .si .sj .sk .sl .sm .sn .so .sr .st .sv .sy .sz .tc .td .tf .tg .th .tj .tk .tl .tm .tn .to .tp .tr .tt .tv .tw .tz .ua .ug .uk .um .us .uy .uz .va .vc .ve .vg .vi .vn .vu .wf .ws .ye .yt .yu .za .zm .zw .io .tv are sometimes used, nothing to do with the country.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is allowing anyone to create a new TLD and manage it. There will probably be hundreds of new TLDs , such as .volvo, .pfizer, .sucks. This will free up .com and allow people to use shorter names. The problem is also creates hundreds of new opportunities for domain spoofing. e.g. mindprod.ca could easily be confused with my domain mindprod.com. To stop remoras, I would have to buy up thousands of similar domains.

Country Code TLD s

The country TLD suffixes, e.g. .ca for Canada, .uk for the United Kingdom, .de for Germany .au (formerly .oz) for Australia are also popular. Some codes such as .tv are used by people who don?t even live in the country; they just find the abbreviation appealing. For the definitive set, see the Iana Two-letter country codes. The table below was up to date as of 2002/03/24. If you notice any discrepancies, please let me know. Normally two letter country codes are all upper case. However, traditionally when country abbreviations are used as TLDs in domain names, they are always shown in lower case as in the following table. See a complete list of country codes.

Domain Name Format

RFC 1034 and RFC 1035 describe the format of a domain name. It is formed of segments made of the A-Z 0-9 and hyphen separated by dots. RFC 5322 describes the format of an email address.

The people who designed this scheme were not thinking clearly. The hyphen should have been a noise character that is ignored. Then mind-prod.com and mindprod.com would be considered the same domain. Users would not need to remember where the dashes go. You would not need to buy all the dash variant domain names and protect them all from remoras.

Domain Name Speculation

Had you the foresight in 1992 to spend $50.00 USD and buy the rights to mcdonalds.com, mcdonalds.ca or mcdonalds.us you could be a multimillionaire today. Then again, McDonald’s could have sued you for trademark infringement. Trademark owners are sometimes taking domain names away from speculators without even the formality of going to court.

The hope of sudden riches has fueled a fad, speculation in domain names. People lease domain names for $19.00 USD per year from Network Solutions (née Internic) (the body that hands out .com names) plus a handling fee to some broker. Most Internet domain name brokers charge a percentage of the sale price, not a flat fee. Speculators hope some company will want the name and pay some considerably higher price. Some names have gone for millions of dollars. Some speculators lease out a name to one or more people, especially a prestigious email address. Of course, most of names purchased for speculation have not sold at all. Nearly every name in the dictionary, every slang word and every slang phrase has been purchased. Every misspelling and variant of popular site names such as altavista.com have been snapped up by remoras, people hoping to pick up stray hits. There are few reasonable names left speculators have not taken. Right now, there is a domain name registered for every three US citizens.

You have to pay $19.00 USD a year to keep your registration. If you don?t pay, it goes up for grabs again. If you do pay, no one can take it away from you, except the courts. Recently expired domain names are a prime source for speculators.

Some countries such as Turkmenistan ( .tm), Guernsey ( .gg), Jersey ( .je) and the Isle of Man ( .im), encourage foreign companies to register. Others such as South Africa (.za) insist the servers be on South African soil. Check with iana to see who is in charge of the country or top level domain that interests you. Often they won?t even have a website, just an email address. Normally you go through a broker, so finding that information is his problem.

In researching this, I came across some clearly fraudulent domain-selling sites. Especially if you plan to buy a non-standard TLD , do some research on your broker; make sure you really get world-wide exclusive use of the name and that others could really find you on the net. It is not much use to have a name that is not properly hooked into the global DNS system. You should be able to find lots of sites on the net using the proposed TLD if all is on the up and up. You might see if any of those sites will be willing to tell you the email address of their broker and how they like him. I am particularly suspicious of the .shop and .rec domains because of conflicting information I read.

Where to Buy Domain Names

I thought you would like to see the prices on this webpage in  CurrCon Applet needs Java 1.8 or later to display prices in your local currency. , but you can change that instantly, thanks to the Canadian Mind Products CurrCon Applet that you too could use on your own website to display prices in any world currency using today’s exchange rates.

If you want to play this speculation game, or if you simply want to find a suitable domain name for your own business, here are some resources:

Domain Name Resources
body TLDs they manage All prices are in  CurrCon Applet needs Java 1.8 or later to display prices in your local currency.
body TLDs they manage All prices are in  CurrCon Applet needs Java 1.8 or later to display prices in your local currency.
ICANN the global authority. Wholesaler for:
.com, .net, .edu and .org.
New top level domains include :
.aero
(air transport, for services & companies
dealing with air travel),
.biz
(business & corporations).
.coop
(co-operatives)
.info
(newspapers, libraries, etc.)
.museum
(museums, archival institutions, & exhibitions)
.name
(individuals and personal websites, e.g. www.Roedy.Green.name. Note you own only www.roedy.green.name not roger.green.name the way you would with other domains. Your email address becomes roedy@green.name, not roedy@roedy.green.name.)
.pro
(accountants, lawyers and physicians)
The ICANN. The body in charge of assiging all Internet DNS names and numbers.
HugeDomains Sell premium names for thousands of dollars. They have their catalog of names organised by categories.They are not where to go to register an unregistered name. You go to buy from someone who has already registered the name you want.
IANA Part of ICANN IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority). Manage handing out country codes and other top level domains. Best source for contact of who is in charge in each country and top level domain. You don?t deal with them directly. They are the wholesaler to assign IP numbers.
101Doman sell domain names. .eu .com .net .org .biz .bz .info .cc .tv .ws .us .name .ae .com.af .ag .com.ai .com.al .am .com.ar .as .at .com.au .bb .be .bg .com.bh .bn .com.bo .com.br .bs .bz .ca .cc .cd .ch .cl .cn .com.cn .com.co .co.cr .cx .cz .de .dj .dk .com.do .dz .com.ec .com.eg .es .eu .fi .fm .com.fo .fr .com.fr .ge .com.gi .gl .gm .gr .gs .com.gt .com.hk .hn .hr .hu .ie .co.il .co.in .ir .is .it .jm .com.jo .jp .co.ke .com.kh .com.ki .co.kr .kw .kz .com.lb .li .lk .lt .lu .md .mn .mo .ms .mt .mu .com.mx .com.my .nc .com.ng .nl .no .nu .co.nz .om .pa .com.pa .com.pe .pe .com.pk .ph .com.pl .com.pr .pt .com.py .ro .ru .com.sa .com.sc .se .com.sg .sh .si .sk .sm .st .co.sv .tc .tf .co.th .tk .tm .tn .to .com.tr .tv .com.tw .com.ua .co.uk .us .com.uy .uy .com.ve .ve .vg .com.vn .vu .ws .yu .co.za .au.com .br.com cn.com .de.com .eu.com .gb.com .gb.net .hu.com .no.com .qc.com .ru.com .sa.com .se.com .se.net .uk.com .uk.net .us.com .uy.com .za.com .biz .info .aero .name .pro .museum .coop
Altavista search engine Search for domain names to find domain names for sale.
Alternic.net various e.g.: .art .arts .asia .aus
.bank
.cam
.dds .design
.email .exp
.fam .faq .film .firm .fun
.gay .games .ger .globe
.gmbh
.help
.i .inc .info
.jpn
.kids .law .learn .llb
.lnx .ltd
.mail .mag .med .media
.netz .nic .nom
.per .prices
.radio .rsc
.sea .service .sex .sky .space
.sport .shop
.tour .travel
.usvi
.web .wir .wired .wine
.xxx
.zine .zoo
Non-standard TLDs.
americaregistry.com .us USA
APNIC.net various e.g.: .cn .id .in .jp .kp
.kr .mm .ph .th .tw
national domain names for Asia and the Pacific.
ARIN IP numbers ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers). Handle assigning IP numbers (not domain names) for North America, South America and sub-Saharan Africa. Unless you want to buy thousands of IP ?s you would contact an ISP instead.
BB-online broker for .ie .as .no .se .tm,
.uk .co.uk .uk.com
Irish company. I have had no dealings with them, but they have an impressive website.
CIRA.ca .ca CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority). They are in charge of all .ca names for Canada. Individuals and small ISPs (Internet Service Providers) don?t deal directly with them. They must deal through certified registrars.
CNNames .cn .tw Register Chinese domain names, .cn .com.cn .net.cn .org.cn
co.za .co.za South African commercial domains
CoreNic list of brokers Trade organisation that maintains a global list of brokers who will help you buy domain names.
book_cover book A comprehensive guide to domain name speculation. It will show you how to buy domain names without using a broker. It also talks about the legal issues revolving around trademarks vs. domain names and how various disputes over domain names have been resolved.
book cover recommend book⇒Domain Name Handbookto book home
by Ellen & Peter Rony 978-0-87930-515-4 paperback
publisher Publishers Group West
published 1998-06-01
High stakes and strategies in Cyberspace.
Australian flag abe books anz abe books.ca Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de amazon.ca Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de Chapters Indigo Canadian flag
Spanish flag amazon.es Chapters Indigo eBooks Canadian flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com abe books.com American flag
French flag abe books.fr amazon.com American flag
French flag amazon.fr Barnes & Noble American flag
Italian flag abe books.it Nook at Barnes & Noble American flag
Italian flag amazon.it Kobo American flag
India flag junglee.com Google play American flag
UK flag abe books.co.uk O’Reilly Safari American flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk Powells American flag
UN flag other stores
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock. Try looking for it with a bookfinder.
dns2go free domain names of the form xxxx.dns2go.com The interesting thing about dns2go, is that you don?t even need a permanent IP to have a domain. You can have one with dial up via SLIP (Serial Line Interface Protocol) or PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) where you get a different IP every time, or with ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line technology) or cable TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) with DHCP dynamic IP assignment. You can run game servers, mail servers, webservers etc. using a permanent name.
dotbiztoday.com .biz $70.00 USD for two years.
DotEco .eco Green sites. Not available yet. There are three companies vying to control .eco. Some want to use it for greenwashing. DotEco want it controlled by ecology organisations like the David Suzuki Foundation.
Dotster sells domain names and web hosting
.biz .bz .ca .cc .com
.info .name .net .nu .org
.sr .tv .us .ws
$6.00 USD per year for .name
$15.00 USD per year for .biz, .com, .info, .net, .org, .us
$20.00 USD per year for .ca
$30.00 USD per year for .bz
$35.00 USD per year for .ws
$40.00 USD per year for .cc
$45.00 USD per year for .nu
$50.00 USD per year for .tv
$250.00 USD per year for .sr
DOT.TV .tv Theoretically for the country of Tuvalu, but informally for something associated with television. Advertised as cool. Domain names for $50.00 USD a year. Their website now seems to artfully dodge the issue of price like some snake oil salesman.
Dyn 38 free domains plus .bz .cc .cn .com .info
.name .net .org .tv .co.uk
.org.uk .us
$15.00 USD per year though .cc .cn and .tv cost extra. Dyn offers three free services of interest to people who host webservers on their home machines,
fapesp.br .br Brazil
iana .int International Treaty Organisations
Godaddy website GoDaddy .ag .am .asia .at .be .biz .bz .ca .cc .co .co.in .co.nz .co.uk .com .com.ag .com.br .com.bz .com.co .com.es .com.mx .com.tw .de .es .eu .firm.in .fm .fr .gen.in .gs .idv.tw .in .ind.in .info .it .jobs .jp .me .me.uk .mobi .ms .mx .net .net.ag .net.br .net.bz .net.co .net.in .net.nz .nl .nom.co .nom.es .nu .org .org.ag .org.es .org.in .org.nz .org.tw .org.uk .se .tc .tk .tv .tw .us .vg .ws .xxx $4.00 USD if you use their web hosting services. Allows non-techies to set up webstores.
Hostway .asia .biz .co .info .mobi .net .org .pro .us $10.00 USD to $25.00 USD per year.
Inter-Corporate .com .org .ca .net .edu
and any others.
They will broker buying your domain name for you. They charge only a flat $19.00 USD per year (i.e. zero markup on the Verisign Network Solutions/InterNIC fee) for .com, .org, .net, .edu and $50.00 CAD per year for .ca. This is the lowest brokerage fee I have heard of and they give the best service of any ISP I have ever dealt with. Very good people. The price includes the use of Inter-Corporate?s secondary DNS servers and when used for the purpose of selling domain names, those are the only fees. They don?t ask for a percentage of the sale and the setup fee includes the final transfer as well. They can also host websites, do HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), artwork etc. Email Randolf Richardson <randolf@inter-corporate.com> for more information.
Domain Names Global .aero .biz .coop .info .museum
.name .pro
$24.00 USD per year. Australian company.
NamesForEveryone.com .name $70.00 USD for two years. Currently only taking re-registrations.
Network Solutions
(n?e Internic aka Verisign Network Solutions)
.biz .bz .cc .com .edu
.gs .info .ms .net .nu
.org .tc .tv .us .vg .ws
They have an online database of which names are taken and who has which names and when they are due to expire if the owner does not renew. They retail .com names for $35.00 USD per year. They retail .name names for $29.00 USD per year.

To talk directly to ICANN , a broker must ante up $50,000.00 USD Some registration companies have done this then folded leaving the state of some of their registrations in limbo. Internic is the original and presumably most stable source.

new.net .agent .arts .auction .chat
.church .club .family .free
.game .gmbh .golf .hola
.inc .kids .law .llc
.llp .love .ltd .med
.mp3 .school .scifi .shop
.soc .sport .tech .travel
.video .xxx
They seem no longer to be soliciting business since the home page requires a login. Not everyone will be able to access these names since browsers don?t recognise these non-standard domains. These people are crooks. They surreptitiously install browser add-ons to make their non-standard domains visible. On top of that they charge three times as much as real domains, $30.00 USD per year.
iana.org .mil American military. nic.mil is no longer accessible to the public.
NIC.mx .mx Mexico
NJStar Unicode Domain Names .com .net Chinese, Japanese and Korean, non-ASCII domain names.
PIR .org in charge of all .org. Does not deal with the public directly. You go through a registrar.
http://www.dotgov.gov .gov American federal government. Registration is limited to federal, state, local and tribal government organizations. $125.00 USD per year.
register.com register.com .biz .ca .cc .co .co.nz .co.uk .com.tw .de .eu .eu.com .info .jp .la .mobi .net .net.nz .org .org.nz .org.uk .tv .tw .uk.com .us .us.com .ws .xxx $0.50 USD per year. Last revised/verified: 2012-12-12
RIPE.net various e.g. .at .be .ch .cz .de
.dk .es .fi .fr .gr
.hu .ie .is .nl .no
.pl .pt .se .uk
national domain names for Europe
sedo.de various e.g. .at .be .ch .cz .de
.dk .es .fi .fr
.gr .hu .ie .is .nl
.no .pl .pt .se .uk
broker for trading domain names in Europe. Appraisal service for domain names.
Voxdomains.com .com .info .ca .us .net .org .biz .name .tv .co.uk .me.uk org.uk $4.75 USD to  $40.00 USD per year.
webnames.ca .ca $50.00 CAD per year. They primarily deal with ISPs not individuals.

You don?t like any of these? You can have any TLD you want for a mere $185,000.00 CAD . Normally you would do that only as an inventmest then sell off the individual domain names ending with that TLD. Just apply to ICANN.

Wet Blanket Caveats

Allow me a dour personal comment. Hopes of high profit for no work is a form of gold fever and not all that different from playing the slot machines. Speculators do no useful work, other than perhaps subsidising the name assigning organisations. They are sponges on the body politic. Nature punishes nearly all of them. The main ones who get rich are those who provide services for the gambling addicts, just as in a goldrush.

Consider the crazed tulip speculation in renaissance Holland. Prices on a single bulb were bid up to astronomical levels ? $30,000.00 USD a bulb. Then, suddenly, people noticed that bulbs actually had little real value and the whole economy collapsed. I am watching a similar domain name gambling fever gripping my friends. The basic rule of gambling is, don?t risk more than you can afford to lose. Consider also the law of supply and demand. There is a very large pool of potential domain names and only a few customers willing to part with any substantial dollars for one. If you want to make money, you will have to be very clever.

Consider also that IANA could at any time make available additional TLDs such as .store and .ski which will dilute the value of .com names.

People are buying up the silliest names that I doubt will ever sell. It might be worth while to study the market to see what names are selling before leaping in with both feet. My student project domain database would help you make intelligent buying decisions.

On the other hand, if you think you may want a domain name for yourself any time in the next ten years, act quickly to buy it. Otherwise you may be stuck paying through the nose to speculators for anything half-way decent.

How to Buy a Domain Name Without A Broker

If you want to buy a .com or .org domain name without a broker, here is what to do. The only tricky part is having a permanent IP that you want your domain name directed to. You will have to get that from your ISP. Typically you would not keep your IP permanently, like your domain name. You would use it only for the time you are associated with a particular ISP. You are really borrowing one of his logically related IPs.

You don?t have to host your website with the same ISP you get your Internet access from. Shop around for the best deal. Consider the ISP ?s reputation, speed of his servers and, of course, the costs of setup, the IP, disk storage, hits, cost of additional domain names going to the same server. Most ISP ?s will sell you a bundle, including the brokering to buy you the domain name. Some sites will host free if you post ads for them, however, that looks tacky.

To register, you need some server computer to service browser hits on your domain name. Further, you want to get your domain name out on the web, known, indexed in search engines etc. so that potential buyers of the domain name can find you.

  1. If your domain registry company goes out of business, it is not the end of the world, so long as they don’t just take your money and run immediately. Your rental of the name is valid for a year anyway. You can renew it from someone else when it expires without risk of someone stealing it from you if you remember to renew before it expires. You just buying a bookkeeping service. The domain name registry company don’t actually own anything to sell you, though they may do some speculative purchase of domain names likely to be popular with many people, which will be more expensive.
  2. Network Solutions is the original and the most likely to stay in business. It does not rank as high as others in terms of service, price or legal freedom. Unlike its competitors, it offers both email-based and web-based registration. Email registration is preferable for three reasons:
    1. Simplicity (no clicking on a few dozen web pages to make a single change to a DNS server or mailing address)
    2. Security (websites can be easily hacked but eMail remains relatively secure since mail servers are located through DNS and DNS is tightly controlled from the top down). You can also use PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and encrypted passwords.
    3. Bulk management can easily be automated (updating 300 Internet domains through a web interface is excessively time consuming as opposed to using a PERL script to send 300 eMails to make these same changes.)
    The domain name buyers? guide recommend?s the Australian company InternetNamesWW.com as their top choice. Usually your ISP has a broker he prefers to deal with. Every broker has different and relatively complicated registration procedures. It is not worth picking a new broker just to save $5 and having to deal with unfamiliar procedures. Normally you should follow your ISP ’s recommendation. If you are registering or reregistering 100 names or more, consider using netantics.com for a deep discount.
  3. Check at Network Solutions that your .com domain name is not already taken. There are delays in the system. A name that appears to be free may not actually be free. It is first come, first served. Don?t dawdle. My speculating friends have many a time lost a good name to others by waiting even a few hours to think it over.
  4. Click on Register a Domain Name.
  5. Fill in the New Domain Registration For field with your domain, e.g. orgasmatron.com. Don?t include the www.
  6. Select new registration.
  7. .com names are for companies. Fill in the company name in the Organization Name field. .org names are for non-profit organisations such as charities.
  8. Fill in the Organization (Registrant) Information name and address. You will need to encode your country using the two letter codes shown above, e.g. US for the USA and CA (Canada) for Canada.
  9. In the Administrative/Agent, Technical and Billing Contact information section, leave the NIC (Network Interface Card) Handle fields blank and click the provide contact information options. You will later be assigned a NIC handle e.g. RG9999 that you can use in place of filling in the contact information so you don?t have to keep repeating the contact information four times for every domain you buy.
  10. In the Name Server section, for Primary Server Hostname fill in your new domain e.g. orgasmatron.com, that is presuming your ISP will set it up as a DNS server. You should get instruction from the ISP who will host your website on what to use.
  11. For the Primary Server net address fill in the permanent IP where this domain will be hosted, e.g. 127.0.0.99 This is the only tricky part. You will have to get this from your ISP . They will charge you for it. Because of the clerical overhead, you can?t buy IP ?s singly, except from an ISP. It is possible to share the same IP among several domains.
  12. For Secondary Server Hostname fill in your ISP ?s domain, without the www, e.g. inter-corporate.com. You should get instruction from the ISP who will host your website on what to use.
  13. For the Secondary Server net address fill in the your ISP server?s backup secondary IP e.g. 127.0.0.100. You should get instruction from the ISP who will host your website on what to use.
  14. Leave the optional information blank.
  15. After you make your submission, Verisign Network Solutions will send you an agreement via email and you send it back to them. This process ping pongs back and forth with ever stronger confirmation that domain is yours until eventually they send you a bill and you pay it and they confirm the payment. Then the domain is really yours.
  16. Since you have 90 days to pay, many speculators buy hundreds of names. If they can?t sell them in 90 days, they just let them lapse. This is not good for Network Solutions since they have just as much processing cost as in a real sale. Network Solutions often holds up sales for manual adjudication in an attempt to discourage this practice.
  17. For more details on how to register a domain name see Network Solutions.
  18. Later you can return to Verisign Network Solutions to update any of the information. There are several schemes you can use to ensure that only you modify the records. See Updating Domain Name and Associated Records at Verisign Network Solutions for details.
  19. When your registration is due to expire, you will start getting what at first appear to be invoices from all sorts of companies asking you to renew. You might want to change registrars, but don’t blindly pay these invoices. Make sure you are paying the right company. Verisign Network Solutions sends bills under the name Netsol.com. This must lose them a lot of business from people thinking the invoices are phony.

New TLDs

ICANNhas announced 2000 new TLDs such as .fun, .christmas and .mortgage. They are selling of entire TLDs for companies to parcel up and resell. To protect your business name, you would have to buy it separately in every different TLD

Global Domains

If you have a website, e.g. mindprod.com your enemies will at least try to buy mindprod.ca hoping either to cause confusion and lower your traffic, or to steal some of the its traffic intended for you. Big corporations buy up their domain name with all the TLD variants, e.g. .com .net, .biz etc. But now there are so many possible TLDs, that strategy becomes impractical. I suggest that when you buy a domain, that normally all the TLD variants would automatically come with it for various uses, usually setting up websites for a particular country in their language (perhaps all hosted on the head office server).

Regional Domains

Consider the domain pizza.ca and pizza.uk. It is quite reasonable for completely different parties to own them. Further pizza.ca could be further partitioned by province and city and district in the city. Further, several pizza places or chains in the same neighbourhood could share it too. Calls would be randomly routed to the various pizza.ca clients in a region, proportional to the amount they paid for the domain. This would not require the regional participants to co-operate in any way or to share websites. It would all be handled by DNS.

country codes
currency codes
cybersquatter
DNS
Dyn: three free services of interest to people who host webservers on their home machines
ICANN
IDN
IP
local domain
TCP/IP
TLD country codes
whois

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