Domain Names - Putting the
Pieces Together
Your own domain name can
provide your organization or company with its "name
on the internet" and, with a mail server which uses the name, you can
get e-mail addressed to your internet identity: yourname@yourdomain.com. To use
e-mail it's necessary to have an e-mail address and your own domain name is
more than vanity - it's a way to promote your business.
Without your own domain
name, e-mail will be through an account at Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL, Netscape
or another free or fee-based service. That's fine if it's only an e-mail account,
but if you are doing business, someone else's domain name can't promote your
business identity -- unless your company is AOL or Yahoo!.
Domain names are not really
owned, but are rented under rules which originated with the advent of the
World Wide Web and are now administered under the Internet
Committee for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICAAN). The three best known "Top
Level Domains" are .com .org and .net
which were originally for commercial businesses, non-profit
organizations and internet service providers.
It shouldn't be surprising that .gov is for government web
sites.
A domain name provides
an identity for a web site. Through the "domain name
system" a domain name is linked to a particular IP number. A useful domain
name for a company is the company's name; it's certainly easier to remember
that the New York Times is www.nytimes.com than to remember
the IP number of
199.239.137.200. Entering either the name or the number into
a web browser will have the same result. We have enough numbers to remember
with telephone numbers and postal codes.
Choosing a domain name
"All of
the good names are taken," you may hear. Certainly most 4- and 5-letter
words have been registered, often by people who hope to "sell" them at a
profit. A domain name may be hyphenated, which opens nearly unlimited options.
Ours is hypnenated: global-freeway. We chose the name to
reflect our goal to provide access to the "information super-highway." And
the internet doesn't have borders - it's a global system.
The registrar
Once you have selected a
name and determined that it is available it must be registered. We can handle
that in conjunction with AWRegistry. Once a domain name is registered there
is usually little need to change the information but if it needs to be changed,
can you do it? Or will you be dependant on someone
else? A domain registered through us gives you complete
control over the domain records through an easy web-based interface. Registration
through our system also provides "domain parking" and e-mail forwarding --
features which may be "value added" options at another registrar. ("Domain
parking" is used when you register a domain name but the server or site
isn't ready - perhaps while the site in development.)
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