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This article will covering following topics about Domain name:
What's a Domain name
General speaking, Domain name is a easy remember name for human to identifies one or more computer(s) that is belong to an organization, a business or a single person.
On Internet, each computer has a unique address (IP addresses) to communicate with other, the address is like 72.14.213.99, which is hard for human to remember. But if we can give it a easy-remember name as www.google.com, that will be much easier for people to use.
So, in above example, 'google.com' is the domain name which reflets a company, 'www' is a specific computer name that belongs to that company.
Domain name has to be unique, for an organization, a business or a single person. Therefore, Domain name has to be registered to make sure it's leagal and unique.
Who manage the Domain name
The ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has overall responsibility for managing the domain name service (DNS). ICANN is a non-profit corporation that was created on September 18, 1998 in order to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. government by other organizations, notably the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).
Two main groups of domains
From the beginning (1990), the domain name space was divided into two main groups of domains: Generic Top-level Domains (gTLD) and Country Code Top-level Domains (ccTLD).
In the above Google name example, Google registerd its name under '.com' (one of the Generic Top-level Domains), so its domain becomes 'google.com'. If Google register its name under '.net' gTLD, then its domain name will be Google.net .
Also, if Google register under one of the Country Code Top-level Domains, for example, '.us', its domain name will be google.us .
You can register your company name under several different top domain names.
Generic Top-level Domains (gTLD), list
As you may already know, the most popular gTLDs are COM, NET, ORG, GOV, EDU, MIL and INT.
Here's a full list of all current gTLDs and their intended usage, from Wikipedia.
aero the air transport industry.
arpa reserved exclusively to support operationally-critical infrastructural identifier spaces as advised by the Internet Architecture Board
asia companies. organisations and individuals in the Asia-Pacific region
biz business use
cat Catalan language/culture
com commercial organizations, but unrestricted
coop cooperatives
edu post-secondary educational establishments
gov government entities within the United States at the federal, state, and local levels
info informational sites, but unrestricted
int international organizations established by treaty
jobs employment-related sites
mil the U.S. military
mobi sites catering to mobile devices
museum museums
name families and individuals
net originally for network infrastructures, now unrestricted
org originally for organizations not clearly falling within the other gTLDs, now unrestricted
pro certain professions
tel services involving connections between the telephone network and the Internet (added March 2, 2007)
travel travel agents, airlines, hoteliers, tourism bureaus, etc.
Country Code Top-level Domains (ccTLD), list
The country code top-level domains (ccTLD) were primarily based on the two-character territory codes of ISO-3166 country abbreviations.
For The USA, use '.us', for Canada use '.ca'.
A full list of Country Code Top-level Domains can be found from following page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain
Where to register a domain name
An end-user can NOT directly register a domain and manage their domain information with ICANN. Everybody has to choose a designated registrar to register.
A Domain Name registrar is an organization or commercial entity, accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) or by a national country code top-level domain (ccTLD) authority, to manage the reservation of Internet domain names in accordance with the guidelines of the designated domain name registries and offer such services to the public.
Be aware of the domain privacy issue and make sure to buy Private Domain Registration when you registering your domain name.
List of Top Domain Name Registration Providers (Registrars)
See the List of Top 5 Domain Name Registrars
Buy or sell domain names
There are some companies provide after-market domain name trading service, such as Sedo and Namedrive. So if the domain name you want is not available for register, it may available for buying on the trading marketplace. Make sure to go there to take a look.
You can use following search engine provided by Sedo to find out whether your wanted domain name is available for sell and how much it costs.
Good Luck !
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