A common misconception is that a domain name is the same as a website. While websites are an important part of the Internet, domain names can include and control many additional services and are an integral part of how the Internet works and possibly form the core of your business or office network. This guide will explain the role of domain names in a little more detail, and briefly cover the Domain Name System (DNS) which is one of the main building blocks of the Internet and corporate networks as we know them. Finally, we will look at tips and tricks for registering a good domain name.
What Is Domain Name
In simple words, a domain name is a space on the Internet that is assigned to a single person or company. If we use an analogy, we can imagine the Internet as a world. In this case, the domain name will be a piece of land within the world that we can call our own. On your land, you can do whatever you want; You can even divide it into smaller parts and sell it if you want. It is important to note that the analogy breaks down at this point, as it is not possible to buy a domain name outright, you can only buy it for a period of time (usually between 1 and 10 years), however if you wish So there’s nothing stopping you from renewing the domain name every year and keeping control of your domain name for the rest of your (or your business’s) life. The domain name itself contains certain information, such as who owns the domain name, where the domain can be modified, and finally what services can be accessed on the domain name and where these services are located. A website is one of many services that can be associated with your domain name. Before we look at the information that a domain name stores, we’ll take a brief look at two characteristics of a domain name that make it a fundamental factor in the way the Internet works today.
Domain Name System
Domain names are unique and follow a hierarchy. These properties mean that if we know the location of one domain name, we can find the location of any other domain name on the Internet.
All domain names on the Internet are children of this master domain. Simply put, every computer is hard coded to know the location of this master domain (in addition, your computer is also set up to request domain name information from your Internet service provider). This domain name knows where its other services are located, such as the location of .uk domain names. The .uk domain name knows the location of .co.uk and so on down the chain until by asking each domain name in turn you can know the location of help.fasthosts.co.uk. Ultimately help.fasthosts.co.uk will provide space for the website www.help.fasthosts.co.uk. So in this example, we can see that a website is one of many services that you can associate with a domain name and how by knowing the location of the master domain name you can find any service on the Internet. Although this may be a very simplistic view of the DNS service, this understanding of the concepts can be very helpful in understanding how the Internet works, and how your domain name works on the Internet.
Information Recorded On A Domain Name
Every domain name has some information recorded with it, this information can be available to the entire internet through Who is search. The exact information saved varies slightly depending on the type of domain name you register, but can be divided into three categories.
Your Contact Information
Owner Contact (Registered): Owner contact details are required to show who is the actual owner of the domain name.
Administrator Contact: If you are registering a domain name for a company, you may want to delegate the administration of your domain name to a specific person or department. If the registry needs to contact you regarding the administration of your domain name, they will contact you at the details provided in this field.
Technical Contact: This contact is not used by some registries, but can be quite useful if you are a large company registering domain names. This will direct all technical inquiries and requests to a third contact, so the finance department doesn’t receive emails about nameserver changes, etc.!
Information About Your Domain Name
This will be information about your domain name, such as when it was registered, when it will expire, the company with which the domain name is currently registered (for example your domain provider Fasthosts). Finally, depending on the type of domain name, it may also provide further details about the current status of your domain (e.g. unlocked ready for transfer).
Contact Details For Your Domain Name
Finally, a whois search will show at least two nameservers associated with the domain name. As the name suggests, these are servers for your domain name. Nameservers are often described as signposts for the Internet, but can also be described as the address book for your domain name. Anyone who wants to know what services are associated with a domain name will query these nameservers.
Name servers will store more detailed information about the services associated with your domain name. For example, where your web server and email server are located. This information is stored in a file called a zone file. To ensure stability and reliability, domain names must have at least 2 name servers, so that if one fails, the other can take over and continue providing the requested information. Many websites will have more than 2 name servers as additional protection against failures. If you are hosting your website with Fasthosts, we can provide you 3 name servers for this purpose. A name server will be the primary or master name server and will be the master data for your domain name. Any other name server will be a slave name server. They store information from the primary name servers and update their records with the primary name servers on a regular basis. This way, only one master copy of your zone file needs to be updated, while if your master name server fails, the slave name server is in position to take over for you.
And finally each of the three types of information contained in a domain name is independent of each other. This may seem like an odd thing to point out, but it’s a common misconception that if you transfer a domain name from one provider to another, the website will also be transferred, or if you change the domain name’s nameservers. If so, it will also transfer the domain name to another provider. Changing a domain name’s nameservers will change where computers look for services associated with your domain name, but nothing else. Changing your domain provider (transferring your domain name) will change where your domain name can be administered and renewed, and changing the owner’s contact details will change who is the actual owner of the domain name. But changing just one will not affect the others.
What Information Is Recorded On Nameservers
This guide is only for a brief introduction about domain names and DNS, but in short, all the services associated with domain names are stored in domain name servers. This could be the location of your website, email server, location of important servers on your corporate network, any sub-domain name.
The good news is that you don’t need to add all your services to your nameservers. By only using Fasthosts nameservers we will maintain them with all the information needed to host any service available in your Fasthosts control panel.
You can go to the Advanced DNS section of your Control Panel to see what records are inside your nameservers, or if you need to add a new service to your domain name that is not hosted with Fasthosts. How to update these records is as follows:
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