As I’ve mentioned before I’ve spent years sitting in front of this screen and never had much reason to learn how everything does what it does.  More recently I’ve made the decision to publish a blog and am learning about even the simplest things regarding that subject.  I’m surprised to report that its been kind of fun.  One thing that I never paid much attention to were all of the acronyms floating around and I don’t have to tell you that they’re everywhere!  Anyways, one of the first tasks I came across when planning my blog was to come up with a name or web address which I learned is called a domain name.  I mean, I know what a web address is but I had no idea of how it actually functions.

     So as most of you may already know, a domain name is a website address and consists of three parts.  Similar to the address you have on your mailbox or front door, a website has an address that lets us find a particular page or location on the internet simply by typing in the name.   Most of time, especially with the more popular websites, we refer to it by the domain name for example, Comebackjoe.com  is both the name and partial address of this blog.  One of the acronyms that you hear all the time is ’URL ’  which stands for ‘ Universal Resource Locator’ and its three parts make up the web address.  The first section is the prefix for the internet and is written as www.  Those three letters stand for ‘World Wide Web‘.  The second section is the domain name and the most unique part.  This section is usually the part of the address that makes a statement or gives some indication of what the website is about.  However as we’ve all seen, there are some pretty crazy domain names out there that make little or no sense but they are memorable and sometimes that’s all that is important. The third section is the domain extension which closes the address of the website. These extensions are called ‘TLE’s or Top Level Extensions and come in many variations.     

      The TLE follows the  period after the domain name and is also referred to as the domain extension or a suffix for obvious reasons.  Although the most recognizable TLE is .com there are a few others that are used frequently.  Some of those domain extensions such a .net, .org, .edu, .info and .gov. show up almost as often as .com but for different reasons.  Apart from allowing a user to find the corresponding website, each of these domain extensions has a specific purpose.  For instance .com is used for commercial websites; .net is mainly used by networks while .org is used by non- profit organizations.  Less popular but no less important is  .edu which is used by educational institutions while .gov is used by the government and .info is used to identify informational sites.  Of course these are not the only suffixes used on the internet today.  There are many new ones popping up such as .aero, .coop, .museum, .name, .me and .pro.   .aero identifies a site that is related to the aeronautics industry while .coop signifies co-operatives.  .museum is self explanatory while .pro can be assigned to licensed or registered professionals, .name takes the form of a type of vanity URL. 

     Each and every country also has a specific extension that is able to identify the website as being from that country.  For instance, a website  in the UK would have the suffix .uk.  On its own, it is enough to close the address of the website, yet when teamed with a further extension is able to identify what type of website it is.  In other words, a government website residing in the UK would have an extension that read .gov.uk.   These extensions are reserved for countries and consist of two letters. They are created and delegated by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority or the IANA.    

     The official list of domains is maintained by the IANA.  The IANA is a body that oversees the global allocation of IP addresses, Domain Name Systems, and Internet Protocol. It is operated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or the ICANN.    The IANA is responsible for the allocation of unique names and numbers used in domain extensions.  Their task involves liaising with those who operate top level domains, root nameserver operators and those who create ICANN policies.   They are also responsible for determining who will become trustee for each ccTLD registered and in turn delgate adminstration and control of it to them.  Individual ccTLD’s require different requirements for registration which are determined by IANA