Jason Newell - System Administrator           www? .com? ftp? .org? http? .biz? .tv? There are a whirlwind of extensions you can get when you register your domain. Have you ever wondered what all those silly letters mean when you type in a web address? http://www.crytech.com/domain_renewal/ Is a typical URL (universal resource locator.) It is made of several component parts. 1. http:// tells the browser to ask for the page using the hyper text transfer protocol. This is the standard protocol used to transfer web pages. Other protocols you might see are https (secure httpd) or ftp (file transfer protocol) 2. www. refers to the machine the page is hosted on. More on this later. 3. crytech is the name of the domain that holds the page. 4. .com is the top level domain that Crytech belongs to. 5. domain_renewal is the directory of the page you wish to fetch. It will fetch index.php Web traffic is dependant on an invisible helper called DNS (Domain Name Service). As computers prefer to communicate with IP addresses, DNS works like a phone book to translate those ugly numbers into names that we can remember and easily type. Let's take a look at the typical queries and responses required to fetch a web page. When you type the above URL into your browser the first thing it looks for is to see if it already knows how to get to www.crytech.com (because you visited there recently). If it does not, it checks to see if it already knows who the name server is for crytech.com. A name server answers all requests for DNS queries for a specific domain. For instance, crytech's name server is dns.crytech.com. If the browser doesn't know how to get there, it asks the nearest name server. For instance if you use One-Eighty Communications for your internet your computer will ask 180's name server for help resolving www.crytech.com. Again, that server will look in it's cache, and if it is unable to find it, it will ask the top level name servers. .com has become the defacto standard for commercial websites in the United States. Other TLD (Top Level Domains) are .net, commonly used for internet service providers, .org (for non-profit organizations), .edu, (for educational institutions), .gov (for government institutions) Note that with the exception of .edu and .gov you do not have to fall in the category for these TLD's it is merely an guideline. Countries also have their own TLD's such as .uk (United Kingdom) .ca (Canada) etc. Other vanity top level domains are .info and .biz. One interesting example of vanity/country TLD's is .tv domains which actually belong to the country of Tuvalu, however that country is making them available for high prices. You can purchase .com, .org, .biz, .info, .net, .us domains from Crytech for $20/year. Cc and .tv domains are available for $50 per year from Crytech. Continuing on our quest the 180 name server will ask the .com TLD server who is responsible for DNS for crytech.com. It will respond, dns.crytech.com at the IP 216.187.147.38. Using this information, the 180 server will then ask dns.crytech.com "What is the IP address for www.crytech.com?" Crytech's DNS will respond 216.187.147.8 which the 180 nameserver will return to your computer. Using this information your browser will then request the page, using the IP address given to it by the nameserver. So what about www? Where did that come from? Why is that important? WWW is simply short hand for "world wide web". It comes from the early days of the internet when a machine was often dedicated to simply handling websites. So for a domain like crytech, there is mail.crytech.com that handles mail, dns.crytech.com that handles dns, and www.crytech.com that handles web site requests. All of these machines belong to crytech and are referencible by the crytech.com domain. If you read the last article on email handling, there is another dns record called the MX record with points to mail.crytech.com. That way other servers know how to get mail to an address that ends in crytech.com. A few points having to do with DNS. Most sites these days don't require the www. The DNS responds that the web server responds for all ___.crytech.com queries. For instance if you type dell.com you will hit their webserver. However, if you are having trouble connecting to a site without the www, try adding it for old time's sake. Also, many companies register a bunch of domains so that people can guess. For instance, crytech.com and crytech.org both go to the same place. Perhaps a consideration for your website. If you want more information about domain registration, check out crytech's domain area or give us a call!

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