All About Internet
Domain
Names
or
So
you want to register a domain name?
Someday you may be assigned
the task of establishing an Internet presence for yourself or your
company,
organization or institution. Check out the Ragu
Home Page to see how the maker of Ragu Pasta Sauces, Chicken Tonight,
and Pizza Quick has one of the most coveted domain names -
eat.com!
eat.com
A
coveted domain name
The graphic has been reproduced from the web-site
at Ragu only for academic
discussion, evaluation, research and complies
with the copyright law of the United States as
defined
and stipulated under Title 17 U. S. Code.
Step
1: Make sure your name's not already taken
You need to make sure the
domain name you want is not already taken. First, you can type it
into your browser to see if there is already a Web page with that
URL.
Then, you can conduct a search using Whois
in order to see if someone has registered that domain name
but isn't using it as an actual URL.
Other coveted domain names,
some of which are up for sale.
sleep.com
eggs.com
pizza.com
boys.com
women.com
mtv.com
news.com
If you already have a three
letter domain name such as www.atv.com or www.sit.edu or
www.cat.org in mind, you can check the
a
registration
service to see if your first choice is available. If somebody
has registered the name you wanted, don't despair.
You
can always sue.
Domain Name
Disputes
"Cybersquatters."
Nude women at the "Candyland" site. Read more about
domain
name disputes and why it's no longer "first come, first served" on
the Net.
Step 2: Make sure
your domain name follows the rules
Domain names that end with
.com, .net, or .org must follow these rules:
Use only letters, numbers or
dashes ("-")
The domain name can't begin
or end with a dash
You can't have more than 26
characters total
Domain names can't be case
sensitive
Step 3:
Register
your
domain name
Until recently, a company
called Network Solutions
(also known as InterNIC) had an exclusive arrangement with the U.S.
government
to register domain names in the United States; if you wanted a domain
name,
you had to go through them. As of April 1999, the government is
working
to phase out Network Solutions' monopoly by allowing other companies to
award domain names as well. Five companies have been selected as
domain registrars on a trial basis. They will be evaluated to see
how well they accomplish the job and the new arrangement will be evaluated
to see whether it fosters competition. When the trial period is up,
about 50 more companies will be given the right to register domain
names.
The five additional
companies
approved by the government to award domain names during the initial trial
basis are:
America
Online
CORE
(Internet Council of Registrars)
France
Telecom/Oleane (in French)
Melbourne
IT
Register.com
Eventually the government
will get out the domain-name business completely, turning over the
responsibility
to the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit group chaired by Esther
Dyson.
New
generic top level domain
names
Eventually there will also
be more choices for domain names, because of the creation of new generic
top level domain (gTLD) names. The proposed gTLDs
include:
-
.NOM - Individual or personal
nomenclature
-
.INFO - Information
services
-
.SHOP - Businesses offering
goods to purchase
-
.FIRM - Businesses or
firms
-
.WEB - Activities related to
the World Wide Web
-
.ARTS - Cultural and
entertainment
activities
-
.REC - Recreational
activities
A final decision has not yet
been made on which of these gTLDs will be made
available.
These, along with .COM, .ORG,
.EDU, .GOV and .MIL are "top level domain names." (The descriptive
part of a URL, for instance the "unc" in "www.unc.edu" or the "ragu" in
"www.ragu.com," are called second level domain names.)
The Registration
Process
The basic registration
process,
illustrated below, will not change with the addition of companies
authorized
to register domain names.
Click
on the graphic above to see a larger
picture
The graphic has been reproduced from the
InterNIC
Web site only for academic discussion, evaluation, research and complies
with the copyright law of the United States as defined and stipulated
under
Title 17 U. S. Code.
-
Glossary
of terms regarding domain registration
-
More on domain names from Bitnet