Domain Names: Understanding The Basics

What Domain Names Are and How They Work

Domain names serve as identifiers of a specific online address that is registered by an organisation or an individual. They comprise textual segments separated by dots (e.g.: rdj.ie). Domain names make locating websites easier by connecting the IP address (which is a sequence of numbers and, as such, difficult to remember) of the website to the domain name. When a user enters a domain name into a browser, the browser interrogates the Domain Name System to search the domain name and find the associated IP address.

There are two main categories of domain names. Those ending in an abbreviation indicative of the nature of the domain name (e.g. .com for “commercial”) are called generic top level domains (“gTLD”). Those ending in an abbreviation indicative of a specific country (such as .ie or .uk) are called country-code top-level domains (“ccTLD”).