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".

Examples

The following examples illustrates the difference between a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and a domain name:

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: URL: http://www.example.com/

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: Server name: www.example.com

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: Domain name: example.com

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: Subdomain: www

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: Domain: example

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: Top level domain: com

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As a general rule, the IP address and the server name are interchangeable. For most internet services, the server will not have any way to know which was used. The big exception to this is for web addresses. The explosion of interest in the web means that there are far more websites than servers. To accommodate this the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) specifies that the client tells the server which name is being used. This way one server, with one IP address, can provide different sites for different domain names.

Related Topics:
HTTP - Client

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For example, the server at 192.0.34.166 handles all of the following sites:

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: www.example.com

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: www.example.net

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: www.example.org

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