Maybe you've played this game yourself. You think up the most outrageous or bizarre name for a web site, type it in to your handy web browser and... What do you know? Someone has actually setup a site called www.spitball.com. How do individuals and companies get these site names? How does your computer find these sites scattered throughout the vast expanse of the web? The answer lies in a very important service called the DNS: domain name system. The standards set by DNS have made the web as we know it today possible. Read on to find out why.

With this article, our aim is to explain:

• The components of a web site name
• Who is in charge of the DNS
• How the name works on the internet
• Projections on the future of DNS

What IS DNS?

First, let's review IP addresses. Every computer on the Internet has a unique IP address. For instance, the IP address for my current computer is 147.9.10.7 -- this is the number assigned to my PC. Think of this number as being like your phone number. When you want to communicate with our web site, your computer needs to know the IP address of our web site. Without it, there is no communication, just like you can't talk to your friend in California without knowing their phone number.

It would be pretty miserable if we had to memorize numbers for every web site we wanted to visit. That's why the Domain Name System was created (DNS). This allows us to translate the number, 209.67.29.15, to a web site, www.usatoday.com. USAToday.com is a whole lot easier to remember than that long number. So now when your computer wants to access web pages from our computer, all you have to know is www.Help2Go.com!

And you thought naming a baby was hard...

Domain names consists of two main parts: the domain and the machine name. Domains are the final two segments of a site name (e.g. <"something">.) while the subdomain or machine name precedes the domain and identifies a particular computer on the larger domain. For example, www.help2go.com would identify the computer named "www" within the Help2Go domain. So when you enter www.yahoo.com, you are making a request to a web-enabled computer within yahoo.com and asking it to display any information it has on your monitor.

There are many other domains in use on the Internet. Here is a quick breakdown of the major domain suffixes and how they are differentiated:

• .com Commercial, the most prevalent of all domains. Most commercial sites use .com as their domain.
• .edu Educational institutions, notably colleges and universities.
• .gov Sites related to the United States government.
• .net These sites are generally used by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), or other networking corporations. This is not a rule, however, and many commercial enterprises have used .net.
• .org Non-profit sites. Many private and public institutions use the "organization" domain.
• Countries. Sites outside of the United States employ country codes. There are over 200 countries and territories with distinct domains. Some examples include: .uk for Great Britain, .ca for Canada, .cz for the Czech Republic, and .to for Togo!

This is by no means a complete list. The domain name possibilities are expanding. See the next page for more information.

Who's in Charge?

So how can you know what names are available? Who's in charge of this anyway?

Believe it or not, the administration of Internet names is managed by only one comapny, a Virginia-based outfit called Network Solutions (also referred to as InterNIC). Since 1993, Network Solutions has maintained the definitive DNS database of names in use on the web. They have registered over three million names in that time.

Network Solutions offers visitors to their web site the opportunity to search the DNS database to determine if a particular domain is available. If available, visitors may purchase the rights to a name for two years at a cost of $70. Every year thereafter costs $35. While Network Solutions is the only company that registers site names in the .com and .net domains, there are several ways to find and request a name with other domain suffixes. See Best of the Net for ways to find and purchase a site name.

When you ask to see a web page at www.help2go.com, that request is first analyzed by your personal computer. In all likelihood, your PC will not know what the numeric value (physical location) of www.help2go.com is and therefore cannot go out and find the specific computer that has Help2Go information. Your computer's next step is to ask your local DNS server (a computer maintained by your Internet Service Provider) for the number. The DNS server holds a large database that contains every translation of domain names to IP addresses. In most cases, this will do the trick, since Network Solutions distributes its DNS database throughout the web to major internet providers (ISPs). If not, the request gets bumped up the line to a larger network provider's DNS server until an answer is found.

DNS will let your computer know the location of the web site you have requested and route your request across the internet to the specific computer. A reply will return from the destination computer and if everything is working properly, the information will begin arriving at your PC. This entire request and reply transaction takes place in milliseconds. If you have mistyped the web site name or the computer at the other end is offline or there simply is no computer with the domain name you typed, you will see a message that the "location requested does not have a DNS entry..."

As you can see, DNS is integral in allowing you to connect to other computers on the internet. Without it, we would have to remember impossible strings of numbers every time we wanted to visit a web site. Imagine a TV commercial in which Pepsi invited you to visit them on the web at http://192.216.189.48. Not a pleasant prospect at all.

The list grows...

For many new web businesses and private individuals, finding a name for their new web site can be a trying experience. Most of the "normal" .com site names have already been registered and cannot be used by anyone but the registrant. Owning the name does not obligate the owner to post a site. This has brought about a phenomenon called "squatting" in which unscrupulous individuals buy up names that they know are desirable and hold them until a buyer pays an exhorbitant fee for the name. The squatter has no intention of using the name. Recent court rulings have made this practice illegal, but squatting continues nevertheless. Network Solutions has developed a special dispute policy to handle such situations.

There is a movement within the wired community to provide alternatives to DNS that would greatly expand the domain name system, providing new domain suffixes like .biz and .web. The US government would like to hand this responsibility off to a not-for-profit agency created solely for this purpose. For more information, check out the Generic Top Level Domain Memorandum of Understanding (gTLD-MoU -- see below).

Meanwhile, snazzy domains of other countries like .tm (Turkmenistan) or .tv (the itty-bitty nation of Tuvalu) are being sold by independent representatives of those nations. New domains like .biz and .web will soon be added to the main DNS servers and may prove necessary as the web grows, however, you cannot reliably buy these domains at this time. Beware of imitators!