Domain name

A domain name is a name of a computer on the Internet that distinguishes it from the other systems on the network. They are sometimes colloquially (and incorrectly) referred to by marketers as "web addresses".

Address

Every website, email account, etc, on the Internet is hosted on at least one computer (server). Each server has a unique IP address which is nothing but a set of numbers, such as "207.142.131.235" . To access a particular internet service, one can specify its IP address in an appropriate application, such as an FTP client; however because it is difficult to remember numbers, an IP address can be associated with a fully qualified host name (a domain name), such as "www.wikipedia.org". Domain names also provide a persistent address for some service when it is necessary to move to a different server, which would have a different IP address.

Related Topics:
Website - Email - Server - IP address - FTP - Client

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Each set of letters and numbers between the dots is called a label in parlance of the domain name service (DNS). There are some rules about the size and make up of labels. Each must start with a letter or number, and then may be made up of letters, numbers, and hyphens, finishing with a letter or number, to a maximum of 63 characters. These are the rules imposed by the way names are looked up ("resolved") by DNS. Some top level domains (see below) impose more rules, like a minimum length, on some labels. Fully qualified names are sometimes written with a final dot.

Related Topics:
DNS - Hyphen - Dot

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Translating numeric addresses to alphabetical ones, domain names allow Internet users to localize and visit websites. Additionally since more than one IP address can be assigned to a domain name, and more than one domain name assigned to an IP address, one server can have multiple roles, and one role can be spread among multiple servers.

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