What is a Domain Name?

A domain name is the address or URL of a particular Web site. It makes the Internet more usable, since they help people to remember Web sites by memorable names instead of obscure sets of numbers.

Each name follows a standard format, including a suffix that indicates the top-level domain to which a name belongs. In addition to six generic top-level domains (.com, .org, .net, .gov, .edu, and .mil), most countries also administer their own top-level domains, such as .ca for Canada and .de for Germany.

What IS a DNS server? The domain name server (DNS) or domain name system  is a system that stores and associates many types of information with domain names, but, most important, it translates the domain name (computer hostnames) to IP addresses. It also lists mail exchange servers accepting e-mail for each domain.

In providing a worldwide keyword-based redirection service, DNS is an essential component of contemporary Internet use. The DNS is a static, hierarchical name service and it uses TCP/IP hosts, and is housed on a number of servers on the Internet. Basically, it maintains this database for figuring out and finding (or resolving) host names and IP addresses. This allows users to specify remote computers by host names rather than numerical IP addresses.