Newsletter
The Internet: Understanding Domain Names
The Early Days
In the early days of the Internet, one computer could connect to another computer by providing the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the computer that it wanted to connect to.
IP Addresses
The IP address is either a 32-bit numeric address written as four numbers separated by periods (e.g. 216.27.54.164), or a 128-bit numeric address, conventionally expressed using hexadecimal strings (for example, 1080:0:0:0:8:800:200C:417A). The first type is the most common.
Just Too Complicated
As more and more systems joined the Internet, it became very complicated and confusing to have lots of IP addresses to remember. As everyone knows, people communicate in every day language with words, not numbers (I can remember that your name is Jonathan easier than I can remember that it is 20616815). It became apparent that the Internet would be more effective if it worked in the same way.
The First Solution
At first, the Network Information Center tried to keep a simple text file which mapped names to IP addresses (you could imagine this as a little book that said "212.212.214.214 is actually the address of John’s bakery").
The Next Solution
After a while, the little book became a big book, and it was too cumbersome to handle. To deal with this problem, the University of Wisconsin created the Domain Name System (DNS). This is a more effective way of mapping the names to the IP addresses. With the advent of DNS, you only needed to remember the name of a site, not its IP address (eg, you have only to type www.johnsbakery.com into your browser address bar to check out the price of a BLT in Brooklyn, New York).
The Domain Name System itself would take an entire book to explain properly, but in a nutshell it is a distributed database with central name servers at the core. If the central name servers were not updated, there would soon be conflicts and duplication. To avoid this problem, the US Department of Commerce, along with some other helpful folks, created InterNIC. This new body was tasked with taking care of the central database of registered domain names and the corresponding IP addresses in the US. Network Solutions (part of InterNIC) was then chosen to maintain the big (and ever-expanding) book of Internet domain names and the corresponding IP addresses.
After a few years, the Internet community decided that in order to avoid Network Solutions becoming a vast monopoly with a bank account the size of Switzerland, other companies should also be allowed to sell domain names. The other companies (registrars) provide domain names and maintain DNS servers whilst Network Solutions maintains the central database.
Other countries have their own versions of InterNIC which take care of their own systems (e.g. Nominet takes care of .uk domains in the United Kingdom).
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