About Domain Name, Registrars, and Resellers

This article will give you an idea about what is behind the scene between the Domain Name, Registrars, and Resellers, the differences, and the reality.

The concept

A domain name is a string of characters that represent an address on the internet jungle. They are unique, meaning that the is only one combination for each one, like for example there is only one neteron.com in the entire world. A domain name refers to a website address and each website is identified with a series of numbers called IP address.

Client software like Firefox and Chrome use these numbers to connect to the websites, but humans refer to websites using domain names.

Let's clarify this. Humans write the domain name in the navigator and the navigator makes the call to the website using IP numbers, and that is why Domain Names make our life easier as we do not need to remember numbers.

ARPANET - The History

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite.

Both technologies became the technical foundation of the Internet. The first computers were connected in 1969 and the Network Control Program was implemented in 1970. The network was declared operational in 1971.

ARPANET was originally published in 1967 and introduced a concept for the network that was essentially the foundation for the Internet. In 1969, the idea was put into practice with the interconnection of four computers. Much later, the Domain Name System was introduced on the ARPANET. It was published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

As ARPANET grows, so was the complexity of the use of numbers in order to access the remote machines, and it was not until 1983 when was first introduced the Domain Name Systems, with general public registration not being available until February 24, 1986.

The first seven domain extensions were controlled by ARPANET and in 1998 this responsibility went to a nonprofit organization called ICANN.

The ICANN

ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, it was founded in 1998 and grew out of a U.S. Government commitment to transfer the policy and technical management of the DNS to a non-profit corporation based in the U.S. with global participation.

Nowadays is an internationally organized, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD), and country-code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions.

ICANN is responsible for coordinating the management of the technical elements of the DNS to ensure universal resolvability so that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses. It does this by overseeing the distribution of unique technical identifiers used in the Internet's operations, and delegation of Top-Level Domain names (such as .com, .info, etc.).

In 2005-6, four new additional sponsored TLDs (.cat, .jobs, .mobi, and .travel) were successfully launched. ICANN's GNSO is currently developing policy recommendations for the introduction of additional gTLDs.

The IANA

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a department of ICANN that is responsible for maintaining the registries of the Internet's unique identifiers, which include domain names, Protocol Parameters, and Internet numbers (IP Addresses and Autonomous System Numbers).

Top-level domain

A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain.

For example, in the case of neteron.com, the ".com" is the top-level domain. Other examples of tope TLS are ".net", ".org", ".net", ".biz" and ".fi", just to mention few of them.

Second-level and lower level domains

These are the names directly to the left of .com, .net, and the other top-level domains. As an example, in the domain example.co.uk, co is the second-level domain.

Domain names are what came at the left of the Top-level Domain or Second-level when this is used.

The domain name neteron.com is the combination of a TLD and a string name that is the second-level domain. The combination is unique. Subdomains are all subordinates of its next-level domains, for example, ftp.neteron.com, www.neteron.com, and so on.

The Whois Protocol

WHOIS is a TCP-based transaction-oriented query/response protocol that is widely used to provide information services to Internet users. While originally used to provide "white pages" services and information about registered domain names, current deployments cover a much broader range of information services.

Domain name registrar

Do not get fooled. Not all the Hosting Companies are domain registrar accredited, and the reason is the cost of the accreditation. Widely used registrars include Enom, Tucows, and Webcentral. Each ICANN-accredited registrar must pay a fixed fee of US$4,000 plus a variable fee.

Some domain registrars accredited do not register domain names but offer the service to third parties called resellers, and that is where we are.

Domain name resellers

99% of the hosting companies use TLD providers in order to register domain manes. We affiliate with their program and follow the international rules for Registrars.

That is the only way hosting companies like neteron.com can offer registration of domain names. Otherwise, we would need to create a huge platform to connect not only to ICANN but to every single domain that ICAAN does not manage, remember that they regulate but others administrate.

For example, country extensions are administered, managed, and ruled by every government they belong to. If I want to offer ".fi" from Finland or ".it" from Italy, they I would need to build privately the interface to connect those systems.

The other way is to affiliate with a Bigger Domain Name Registrar and offers through them these domains. These affiliations came already with the possibility to offer hundreds of these extensions.

In the case of neteron.com, we are affiliated with enom.com which belongs to tucows.com, the second-largest domain registrar in the world; but enom.com do not have ".fi" in its wallet.

As neteron.com is a Finnish company we create the interface to connect directly to Ficora, the Finnish entity that regulates that specific extension. That is the reason we can offer ".fi" to customers in Finland, and yes we are accredited by FICORA but not by ICANN. Interesting ah!

The end.