Domain Name & the Internet Phone Number

The Internet is really a huge network of connected computers. The Internet is, in a way, like an enormous telephone system because every computer on the Internet has its own Internet 'phone number' which is called an IP address. Computers use these 12-digit IP addresses (example: 001.123.100.101) to send information to each other.

Since IP addresses are not easy to remember, a more human friendly system, the Domain Name System (DNS) is used. The DNS acts like an gigantic internet phone book for computers. When we type in a website's address (called URL - Universal Resource Locator), for example: http://www.infocom-solutions.com  the internet browser checks with the Domain Name System (DNS) to find out the IP address correlated with that Domain Name. When it receives the IP address, the browser then sends a request to that computer for the wanted web page.

Anatomy of a Domain Name

Let us take the website address of InfoCom Solutions Pakistan: http://www.infocom-solutions.com/index.html. The first part is http://, the second is www.infocom-solutions.com and the third is /index.html

The http:// part tells the computer browser what type of information to get and how to get it. The second portion www.infocom-solutions.com is the actual domain name. This is the name that your browser sends to the Domain Name System to get back the IP address. And the third part of the URL, the /index.html is the name of file you want from the remote computer.

Top Level Domains (TLD), Second Level Domains  and Sub-Domains

The .com in the domain name www.infocom-solutions.com  is called the top level domain. There are various types of top level domains like .com, .net, .org, .edu, .biz , .info, etc. Each of the top level domains are managed by a different organization, which is normally called a Registry.

The 'infocom-solutions' part in the domain name in www.infocom-solutions.com is the second level domain which can be leased for specific amount of time normally between 1 and 10 years. 

Once you have registered a second level domain you are free to create third level domains or sub domains. For example, http://domains.infocom-solution.com