All About Domain Names

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Fardon Webhosting - Webhosting & Design Excellence

Fardon Webhosting & Design
P.O. Box 1407, Potts Point NSW 1335
Ph: +61 412 695182
ABN: 931 274 839 23

ALL ABOUT DOMAINS

What is a domain?

A domain is simply a tool to make the Internet user friendly.

Why use a domain?

Computers communicate via a TCP/IP protocol which locates computers by identifying them with an IP address (eg 196.189..0.1). To visit another computer on the Internet, your local computer needs to know the remote computers IP address so that it can connect to it.

Domains use a DNS BIND protocol that enables users to type in easy to remember words, instead of hard to remember numbers.

What is DNS all about?

Whenever you send an email or visit a website using a domain name, DNS is working in the background. The DNS system is basically a large distributed database that adheres to a basic set of fundamental rules defined by the Berkeley University in the USA, when the Internet was ‘born’. These rules are constantly under revision and are called RFC’s.

How does my domain name work?

Technically a domain only has to do one thing; RESOLVE. When using a domain name, it will attempt to find it’s way to the IP address using DNS BIND. This is done by firstly connecting to a ‘resolver’ box, normally hosted by an ISP. The ‘resolver’ box then queries the root zone files, reading the domain from right to left.

Here is an example of how a ‘resolve’ would work:

Where is ‘.’? - Check the root zone files
Where is ‘au.’? - The root zone files hold the location of the other TLD zone files.
Where is ‘com.au’? - The au zone hold information about where to find com.au, net.au, org.au etc.....
Where is ‘fardonwebhosting.com.au’? - The com.au zone file holds thousands of records for domains. For every functional .com.au domain, this zone file has a minimum of 2 NS records associated to it.
Where is ‘www.fardonwebhosting.com.au’? - The query finds the specific Name Servers, they will hold the ‘Authoritive’ information required to report an answer. “Your resolve is complete use this: 203.30.43.102”