Domains and DNS - An Introduction

Welcome to the Internet! Both Domains and DNS are key functions in the world of the web, so it is best to have at least a beginner’s understanding of what they do, and how they function, especially if you want to dive deeper into the world of websites!

Domains

Although you may not know the word “Domain”, you definitely know what it means! A domain is simply the homepage of a website, whether that be google.com, or this.is.my.awesome.website.com. Domains have multiple levels, so let’s take a closer look at each one.

1.The TLD - Or Top Level Domain is the very end of a domain name. The TLD is simple: its what comes after the last dot! This could be “.com” “.net” “.org”, or even some more exotic ones like “.tattoo”. In September of 2021, there were 1,591 TLDs! You can check out the full (And extensive) list of TLDs at tld-list.com.

2.The Second Level domain comes right before the Top Level Domain, so in “google.com”, it would be “google”.

3.The sub-domain, is whatever that comes just before the Second Level Domain. For example, in “docs.google.com”, “docs” would be the sub-domain.

4.For each domain that comes after the Second Level Domain, a “sub” is added to its name. For example, in “this.is.awesome.com”, “this” is a sub-sub-domain.

Here is a simple review:

This.is.awesome.com - “com” is the TLD

This.is.awesome.com - “awesome” is the Second-Level Domain

This.is.awesome.com - “is” is a sub-domain

this.is.awesome.com - “This” is a sub-sub-domain

If you see something like this.is.an.amazing.website.com, “this” would be a sub-sub-sub-sub-domain.

Domain Name Registrar

Domain name registrars are companies that sell domain names. If you are looking to buy a domain, make sure you find a registrar that is ICANN certified. ICANN certified registrars are certified by the company in charge of domain names (ICANN), so you can be sure that the company will follow the rules. Popular domain registrars include NameSilo and NameCheap.

Nameservers and DNS

The DNS process allows your computer to locate the IP addess of the server storing the files of the website you are trying to visit. Namservers help DNS servers with this process by providing the IP address of the server. You can learn more about them inour nameserver article.

How does DNS work?

DNS is fairly complicated, but it is basically a collection of servers (Called DNS servers) that make sure information gets where it needs to be. You can learn more about how DNS works, and what is does, in our DNS propagation article. DNS records are text records placed on the server that provide other servers with information about a domain name. There are many different types of DNS records, with the most popular ones listed here.

Conclusion

Domains and the DNS process are important to every website, and hopefully, this article allows you to gain a basic understanding on this topic. We know that this article may just seem like a collection of links, so we invite you to check out the topic listing, where you can find all of our articles on this topic (Yep, anouther link). Choose the ones that sound the most interesting!