What is a Domain Name

What is a Domain Name?

get a short domain name

You hear a lot of people talking about domain name and how some are more important than others, some are more expensive than others and why some are some better than others but, we want to answer the question, what is a domain name?

Domain names are simply the letter representation of a number, which every computer and website is given.  Words or letters have been assigned to these numbers so that humans can better understand them and to assist in remembering them.

Computers cant read these letters, they are only for us, they only use the numbers in their communication.  Without this conversion, the internet would be much more difficult to navigate and not practical.  For example, which do you find easier to remember “239.847.85.848” or “CNN.com?”

One fun fact, if you want to, you can type in the number for any website into the browswer and it will work just like a domain name.  (This is the IP address for CNN 157.166.226.25, try it!)

Each computer is given these numbers so that they can communicate with each other, send messages and interact; these numbers are called their Internet Protocol or IP address.  In general these numbers come in a series of four groups and are separated by the all too familiar “.” as seen in the example above.

Now you’ve might have heard of the DNS or the Domain Name System which is nothing more than a database that connects or matches the domain names (the names we see) with the IP address (the numbers the computer sees).

When you type the domain name into the browser, whatever it may be, your computer takes the domain and using the DNS matches it to the correct IP and returns with the site you are looking for.

Like your street address you can’t have more than one, otherwise the computer would not know which site you are looking for and would come back with any of the other matching IP’s and this is where ICANN come in.

Never heard of ICANN?  The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is the regulatory group that manages the DNS network (database that connects domains and their corresponding IP address).

They basically keep everything straight but, they have handed off the distribution of the domain names to other companies called registrars or domain name registrars.  If you have ever purchased a domain name before you will be well acquainted with registrars such as GoDaddy, 1 and 1 or Host Gator and there are quite a few other ones as well.

As we mentioned before the IP’s have been given corresponding letters for us to better understand and remember them so when you’re looking to purchase a domain make sure that it is short, powerful and easy to remember.

We hope we were able to pull back the curtain on the amazing world of the internet, domain names and registrars!

Please have a look at what we think will make a great Health Care related domain names and if you want to learn more about domain names follow the link or learn what a brandable domain name is, we have developed an article about that as well.

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