Internet domains are one of the most important elements in the cyberspace structure we have today. Without them, we can assure you that it would be much harder to use the web and navigate with the freedoms and facilities we know .
Currently, just by entering a website name, just make the corresponding request that will take the browser to your homepage. It was not like that before, domains did not exist and to find a website you had to be much more skilled with a computer .
In this article you will know everything you need to know about web domains, so that you understand its real functioning and also its tremendous importance to make things easier for you when surfing the Internet .
Index:
What is a domain and what is its purpose in the operation of the Internet ?
A web domain is the name that identifies a web page within the Internet in the domain name or DNS system . The latter is a protocol that was created to replace the IP addresses of the websites, with names that are easier to remember and write, thus facilitating the access of the common user to the network and humanizing it.
The domain also has the ability to unlink the portal from the IP address of the computer on which the data is stored. Thanks to this, if you use a free hosting and want to escalate to another payment company, you can do it with total freedom . Otherwise, we would be condemned to use the same web hosting forever.
How were websites identified before the existence of the DNS protocol ?
The birth of the DNS protocol is older than the Internet we know today, and for this we must go back to the first years of this . At that time it was called ARPANET, and it was a small local network a few computers interconnected with each other.
In addition, the users of the same, were engineers and computer geniuses of the time who worked for the US Department of Defense , since the purpose of this was purely military.
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The engineers used a system in which they could link to the other computers on the network knowing their IP address, so they had memorized them perfectly. However, they realized that this was inefficient, because as the network grew it would be impossible to learn all the addresses to access each computer .
Therefore, a couple of name engineers Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel designed a system in which gave an IP address a unique name to identify it within the network, in such a way that by simply entering it it could connect to the corresponding equipment.
This system would be known as DNS, and at first it would be managed by the United States Department of Defense itself. At the time of its creation, so-called domain extensions were also established, which were a way of indicating what the main use of it was .
At that time, the first 6 extensions that are currently being used were established. These are:
- .Com: for commercial domains.
- .Net: for companies that provide internet services.
- .Org: for organizations.
- .Gov: for government entities.
- .Mil : for portals of the Department of Defense.
- .Edu: for educational and similar services.
Anatomy of a domain What are the parts of the name of a web?
The anatomy of portal names is quite simple. A web domain has two parts that are :
- Name.
- Extension.
The name is generally the most striking, since it is what we remember the most when searching for a website . While the extension, indicates the usefulness of that domain within the network.
Although domain names are important within the structure of the Internet, it is the extensions that have the greatest administrative weight in the operation of the same. These are the ones that tell the computer what kind of web you are entering.
In addition, these are the ones that make a domain unique as these can have several extensions such as Amazon.com, Amazon.es or Amazon.eu, an extension once it is occupied in a domain name cannot Repeat, so it is impossible to have two websites called Amazon.com.
The latter makes it clear that it is the extensions that really make a domain unique and cannot be occupied by any other Internet portal.
Types of domains and examples How are website addresses classified? ?
Domains are classified into three groups and these, once again, are determined by domain extensions.
Here are each and every one of them:
Generic
The generic domains are those of global use and that identify a website according to its usefulness. These are not linked to any type of territory or geographical area, and are generally used for commercial websites , organizations or media. The best known are .com, .net, .org, .biz (for business portals), .info (information portal).
Territorial
First level territorial domains are those that are linked to a specific geographical area , and indicate to the Internet that this portal is located in a certain country in the world. An example of these are all .es (Spain), .co (Colombia), .eu (European Union), .ve (Venezuela) or .mx (Mexico).
3rd level
Finally there are the third level domains, which are those that combine the concepts explained above. That is, they have a generic and territorial extension , which are used to indicate that an organization, business or store is in a certain country. An example of a third type domain would be the Spanish Administration website (Administration.gov.es) or portals such as moneymas.com.es and the like.
It should be noted that these domains have become obsolete, so there are very few websites that use this combination unless they are government departments or institutions.
Domain vs subdomain How is each one different?
The term subdomain usually generates confusion among users and some wonder if this is a type of domain, and the reality is that it is not at all.
A subdomain is used to identify a website that is part of the same brand or internet domain , it was selling as a branch of it. Generally, it is written before the main domain and extension, and is used to segment content.
However, these have gradually become obsolete. In the past, if a company had a main website where it offered its services and wanted to create an article blog , it created a subdomain of blog.empresa.com style, so that they could create in the same a parallel web in which only the texts were shared.
The problem with subdomains is that they have certain behaviors that make them look like an independent domain, which has its own authority, which makes it necessary to perform a completely new positioning job .
That is why subfolders are currently used, which are addresses that hang from the domain and indicate a section within the web, absorbing all the DA from the original domain, and making it easier to position the new content on it.
URL and web domain are the same? Main differences
Another issue that causes confusion is URLs, and they are often believed to be the same as domain names, but the reality is that they have a much more complex operation. This is because they are not only used to identify a website, but for any document or file that is on the Internet , indicating its exact address.
URL means uniform resource locator, and it’s just what it does. Locate each and every one of the resources that are stored on the Internet. For this it interacts with various protocols. The most popular of these is the HTTP or hypertext transmission protocol, which primarily identifies web pages , as well as FTP, which identifies downloadable documents.
The anatomy of a URL is much more complex than that of a web domain, since in fact, these in their structure contain the same domains.
That said we can identify the following parts :
- HTTP: This would be the identifier of the hypertext protocol.
- WWW: Resource address.
- Extension: that would be the extension that identifies the type of domain.
Meanings: which is the name of the web where the file is located.
After these four parts, comes what is known as the URL path, which indicates the exact location in which a file is located within the web. For example, if you enter the sports section of a digital newspaper with a story about Rafa Nadal’s victory at Roland Garros, you will find a URL like this :
- Elmundo.es/deportes/tenis/nadal-gana-roland-garros.
The data that comes after the slash (/) indicates the exact path in which the article is located. In this case we have that the “Nadal wins Roland Garros” article is in the “tennis” section, of the “sports” section strong> from elmundo.es newspaper.
Why do I need a hosting to host my website after buying the domain?
Many novice users in the world of web development wonder why it is necessary to hire a web hosting service to host our domain and portal on the internet, and the truth is that this is not true .
If you wish, there is nothing that prevents you from hosting your website on your own computer. The problem with which we are doing this, is that it is a slightly demanding process , which will make the computer that we destine only and exclusively for it, in addition to that it must always be on, since if if you turn it off, the server cannot be accessed and therefore the web will be down.
In this situation, the most convenient (but not mandatory) is to hire a hosting service, which is nothing more than paying for the rental of a computer where your website data is hosted and the website is kept online. as long as possible.