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What's in a (domain) name

Most people know what a domain name is. Most people probably don't know why it is constructed how it is, but it is an important part of how the internet keeps track of things.

What a domain name is for

The fundamental purpose of a domain name is to represent an IP address in a human-readable format.

When a user types in a web address, like www.some-server.com or sends an e-mail to somebody@some-server.com, the address, www.some-server.com is sent over the internet to a Domain Name Server (DNS) which is basically a huge database of entries consisting of a domain name and an IP address. When the DNS server is asked about a domain name, it can either return the records it has for a domain name or tell the requesting computer where to look for the correct details. Once the correct details are found in the DNS system (it may take 2 or 3 servers to find the correct record), this information is passed back to the requesting computer, which then uses the IP Address to contact the host at that location to ask for a web page or to deliver e-mail.

It is quite amazing to think of these requests travelling hundreds and even thousands of miles every time we request a web page, send an e-mail or visit an ftp site. It just shows how powerful and efficient the internet is!

DNS servers may contain many records for a single domain name. There are some which are needed for basic services, such a web and email and will be present for almost every domain name. These are the A record and the MX record.

The A record is the address record for a domain name and is used to provide the address of a service of resource on the internet. There will often be several A records for a domain, all set to return addresses for different derivations of the domain name. For example, you may have some-server.com, www.some-server.com and ftp.some-server.com which appear as 3 different records in the DNS entries for the domain some-server.com, but all show the same IP address.

The MX (Mail Exchange) record is used to tell the DNS system where the mail server for a domain can be found. The MX record will normally be set to what is called a CNAME (Canononical Name), which is a special entry in the DNS system that uses a web address that is entered as an A record. So for example, the domain some-server.com would have an A record, mail.some-server.com, that points at an IP address, and the MX record will point at mail.some-server.com.

As you will no doubt see (unless you are familiar with DNS, networks and routing) the Domain Name System, whilst very important to web sites, e-mails and other web uses, can be very confusing and is best left to the experts.

What the different bits of a domain name mean

A domain name, for example www.some-server.com, is very familiar, but have you ever wondered what the different parts actually mean.

First of all, let's break it down a little, so we just have some-server.com. This is about as simple as we can go and is a domain name. The 'some-server' part is the identifier and the .com suffix defines the name (using the original purpose of domain suffixes, such as .net for network, .org for organisation and .com for commercial) as a 'commercial' web site. More commonly, a dot.com suffix is viewed as being American or International.

As the use of domain names grew, there became a need to regionalise names more specifically, so we now have such suffixes as .co.uk, .eu, .it and .de to name a few.

The main purpose of the suffix then, is to regionalise and identify the domain name and allow servers on the internet to identify where to look for domain name information.

Domain names are unique, so there will only ever be one some-server.com registered. There may well be some-server.co.uk, some-server.de etc, but these may be completely unrelated.

So, the some-server part of the name identifies a group of unique records, that are owned and maintained by a company or individual, used to store details in a domain name server, for the purpose of directing internet traffic to any required resource related to that domain.

Each domain name can have many different records in the domain name registry associated with it's resources.

The www part of www.some-server.com will normally be set in DNS as an A record, pointing to the web server that holds the web site for some-server.com. Common prefixes for domain names are www, which points at a web server, mail, which would be used for an MX (Mail Exchange) record and ftp, which would point to an ftp repository. You can add as many prefixes to a domain name as you like (for example, do a DNS lookup for your ISP's main domain name. There are likely to be thousands of DNS entries, one for each broadband account, including the one you are connected to the internet with right now!) and each of these domain prefixes can point to a different IP address and server.

Domain name importance

As you may now see, the importance of a domain name, as the means by which quick, precise and easy communication is achieved, cannot be taken for granted. Behind that simple domain name is a network of thousands of domain name servers, millions of IP Addresses and billions of transactions a second that all get us to our virtual destination, send our e-mail to the correct server and allow us to add meaning to our branding or web site name.

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