Part – II
How does a domain name work?
Many people are not aware of the importance of a domain name for their business and therefore end up with fancy but useless domain names which they have to change sooner or later when they realize the mistake they’ve made. Changing a domain name for a business is not a simple process and can be quite a task as most of the visitors from the previous domain name would have associated you and your business with that domain name. It is a process that is equivalent to rebranding a product, remember the pain FedEx took to ensure that everyone across the globe knew that FedEx was the same as Federal Express, but all new!
If you are a new small business startup, there is no survival online without a really good domain name. Unless you are prepared to spend heavily on advertisement or some sort of marketing, a domain name is your biggest tool to make an impact on your target customers. In order to understand the need of a good domain name for your business, you must first understand how a domain name works and this article will discuss the technical nitty gritty of how a domain name works. Right from the moment you type the domain name in your browser to the moment the website opens, we will discuss the whole deal in this article and then move on to understanding why you should be using a domain name.
A domain is actually an alias for an IP address, in other words it’s an addressing construct for an IP address used for easily locating and identifying a particular computer over the Internet. Internet Protocol i.e. IP Address is a series of numbers used to identify a particular computer form another over the Internet. However, there are so many websites over the internet that it would be hard to remember the IP address of a server, a web host or a website, some people use the internet a lot and they will find it rather difficult to remember so many IP addresses. The domain name was developed as a placeholder for an IP address that was easy to remember and recall. Therefore, today people have to simply remember the domain name of an entity instead of remembering the IP address.
The process from typing the address to connecting to the site is fairly simply on paper but a very complex practical procedure. When a domain name is entered, the DNS converts it to its IP address and then the remote DNS connects the user with the location of the IP address which can either be a network, a server or even a web hosting account holding the index (home page) file of a website. A lot of technicalities are involved in resolving the same. For example, the domain name Courtix.com identifies the company Courtix and whenever a user types the domain name easternBrainInc.com in their browser and presses the enter button, the Domain Name System (DNS) translates the domain name into the pre set IP address for easternBrainInc.com. This IP address is then used by the remote DNS to connect the user with Courtix’s web site.
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Tags: Domains, Web Hosting Services
