What is a Domain?

Domain is an identifier for the IP Addresses associated with a computer/server. For example, google.com is a domain name mapped to the IP address of google server. IP Addresses mapped to domain name are resolved in the Domain Name System (DNS).

Domain names are alphabetic and are easy to remember compared to the direct IP Address. When you hit google.com in browser, it goes to a DNS server which translates it to the associated IP Address before sending the request to the google server. DNS are a network of servers which passes the request to next if one is not able to resolve the DNS.

Domain Names consists of top level domain (TLD) which is the suffix, the domain name and sub domain names.

For ex, in www.google.com,

com is the tld,

google is the domain name and

www is subdomain name

Following are some of the TLDs,

Generic TLDs:

1. gov - For government agencies
2. org - Orgnaizations
3. net - Network Organizations
4. com - Commercial Business
5. edu - Educational Institutions
6. mil - Military
7. biz - Bonafide business or commercial use
8. tel - Contact Data Publish
9. info - Informative website
10. mobi - Mobile Website

Country Specific TLDs:

1. us - United States
2. in - India
3. au - Australia
4. cn - China
5. uk - United Kingdom
6. pk - Pakistan
7. sg - Singapore
8. za - South Africa
9. and more...

Domain Setup may look complex, however it is very simple to do.

A domain can be setup based on following options:

1. Name Server
2. Zone Records
3. URL Cloaking
4. Path Forwarding

You may check out http://tinyurl.com/yd67la6 for Setup details.

Name Server

Name Server is a system where the server IP address is mapped to a Domain Name.

With a name server based setup, one can specify the address of the name server (say, ns1.example.com, ns2.example.com)

When the URL or the website is accessed, the domain provider will lookup the specific name server for the associated IP address and the request will be forwarded.

Zone Records

Zone records are organized in a Zone file of a DNS Server. Zone records can be Mail Exchanger, Host, CNAME, TXT, NS.

CNAME: CNAME records allow a machine to be known by more than one hostname. The cname may be domains.example.com where domains.example.com can be mapped to a different website than example.com.

MX: MX or mail exchange records describe the machines to contact for sending a mail to a DNS node. Each MX records contains a preference (lower preference get higher priority) and host name through which the mail should be routed.

A: A or address records describe the IP that a given DNS node has. Value will be IP address of the node which resolves the domain alias.

NS: NS record defines the name servers to lookup for the alias or domain name. Value will be DNS node name.

TXT: TXT records are informational records to provide additional information about a host. Typically, used to define the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) information record which may be used to validate legitimate email sources from a domain

URL Cloaking

URL Cloaking is a URL Forwarding technique where the user will be redirected to the given URL but the redirected URL will be hidden with a inline frame.

Path Forwarding

Path Forwarding is a URL Forwarding technique where the user will be redirected to the given URL and redirected URL will not be hidden.