Domain Name

- The part of a network address which identifies it as belonging to a particular domain.

- A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet.

Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System (DNS). Any name registered in the DNS is a

domain name.

- Domain names are used in various networking contexts and application-specific naming and addressing purposes. In general, a

domain name represents an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, a server

computer hosting a web site, or the web site itself or any other service communicated via the Internet. In 2014, the number of active

domains reached 271 million.[1]

- Domain names are organized in subordinate levels (subdomains) of the DNS root domain, which is nameless. The first-level set of

domain names are the top-level domains (TLDs), including the generic top-level domains (gTLDs), such as the prominent

domains com, info, net, edu, and org, and the country code top-level domains (ccTLDs). Below these top-level domains in the DNS

hierarchy are the second-level and third-level domain names that are typically open for reservation by end-users who wish to connect

local area networks to the Internet, create other publicly accessible Internet resources or run web sites. The registration of these

domain names is usually administered by domain name registrars who sell their services to the public.

- A fully qualified domain name (FQDN) is a domain name that is completely specified in the hierarchy of the DNS, having no parts

omitted.

- Labels in the Domain Name System are case-insensitive, and may therefore be written in any desired capitalization method, but most

commonly domain names are written in lowercase in technical contexts.

Dedicated Hosting:

- Dedicated hosting is the provision of a dedicated server machine that is dedicated to the traffic to your Web site. Only very busy sites require dedicated hosting. Many companies purchase their own servers and place them on a site that provides fast access to the Internet. This practice is called colocation.

Hosting Servers:- A server dedicated to hosting a service or services for users. Hosting servers are most often used for

hosting Web sites but can also be used for hosting files, images, games and similar content.  Hosting servers can be shared among many clients (shared hosting servers) or dedicated to a single client (dedicated servers), the latter of which is particularly common for larger Web sites where the hosting needs of the Web site owner necessitate more control and/or bandwidth.

- A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server owned or leased for use by clients, as well as providingInternet connectivity, typically in a data center. Web hosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for other servers located in their data center, called colocation, also known as Housing in Latin America or France.

- The scope of web hosting services varies greatly. The most basic is web page and small-scale file hosting, where files can be uploadedvia File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files are usually delivered to the Web "as is" or with minimal processing. ManyInternet service providers (ISPs) offer this service free to subscribers. Individuals and organizations may also obtain Web page hosting from alternative service providers. Personal web site hosting is typically free, advertisement-sponsored, or inexpensive. Business web site hosting often has a higher expense depending upon the size and type of the site.

- Single page hosting is generally sufficient for personal web pages. A complex site calls for a more comprehensive package that provides database support and application development platforms (e.g. PHP, Java, Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, or ASP.NET). These facilities allow customers to write or install scripts for applications like forums and content management. Also, Secure Sockets Layer(SSL) is typically used for e-commerce.

What Are DNS Records?

- DNS stands for Domain Name System, which is the largest digital database in the world, containing information about every web site on the internet.

- Every web site online has an IP address that is its actual internet location, and this number is used to locate the web site within the database.

- The data that tells the web server how to respond to your input is known as the DNS records, or zone files.

- These records play a vital role in the functionality of the internet, and any aspiring internet technology expert should learn the following facts about DNS records and how they are used.

DNS Records Explained

- DNS records are an important, yet unseen aspect of how the internet works.

- DNS records are basically mapping files that tell the DNS server which IP address each domain is associated with, and how to handle requests sent to each domain.

- When someone visits a web site, a request is sent to the DNS server and then forwarded to the web server provided by a web hosting company, which contain the data contained on the site.

- Various strings of letters are used as commands that dictate the actions of the DNS server, and these strings of commands are called DNS syntax.

- Some DNS records syntax that are commonly used in nearly all DNS record configurations are A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, PTR, NS, SOA, SRV, TXT, and NAPTR. The following paragraph details the meaning and usage of each of these syntax.

DNS Syntax Types Explained

- An “A” record, which stands for “address” is the most basic type of syntax used in DNS records, indicating the actual IP address of the domain. The “AAAA” record is an IPV6 address record that maps a hostname to a 128-bit Ipv6 address. Regular DNS addresses are mapped for 32-bit IPv4 addresses.

- The “CNAME” record stands for “canonical name” and serves to make one domain an alias of another domain. CNAME is often used to associate new sub-domains with an existing domain's DNS records.

- The “MX” record stands for “mail exchange” and is basically a list of mail exchange servers that are to be used for the domain.

- The “PTR” record stands for “pointer record” and maps an Ipv4 address to the CNAME on the host.

- The “NS” record stands for “name server” and indicates which Name Server is authoritative for the domain.

- An “SOA” record stands for “State of Authority” and is easily one of the most essential DSN records because it stores important information like when the domain was last updated and much more.

- An “SRV” record stands for “service” and is used to define a TCP service on which the domain operates.

- A “TXT” record lets the administrator insert any text they'd like into the DNS record, and it is often used for denoting facts about the domain.

NameServer

- A nameserver is a server which controls the DNS for a domain. It allows you to decide which hosting company controls your webspace and email.

What are name servers?

- A name server is a specialized server on the Internet that handles queries or questions from your local computer, about the location of a domain name's various services.

- A great simple way to think about name servers is using a phone book analogy. If you were trying to call InMotion Hosting you might have remembered our phone number, but more than likely you'd want to look it up before just guessing at numbers.

- This same story is also true for the Internet and domain names. As an example you're reading this article right now on our InMotionHosting.com domain name.

What do DNS requests to name servers look like?

- But just how exactly did your computer know what webpage to display for you, and what server to pull it from?

- Your web-browser knows you typed InMotionHosting.com into the address bar.

- Your computer then uses DNS to retrieve the current nameservers for InMotionHosting.com.

- Our public nameservers; ns.inmotionhosting.com and ns2.inmotionhosting.com are retrieved.

- Your computer asks our nameservers for the A (address) record for InMotionHosting.com.

- Our public nameservers respond back with the IP address 192.145.237.216

- Your computer sends a request to that IP address along with the page you're requesting.

- Our web server hosting InMotionHosting.com then sends your web-browser the requested page.

- Now if you wanted to, you could bookmark or copy down http://192.145.237.216 for anytime you'd like to come back to our website.

- More than likely though, InMotionHosting.com is going to be much easier for you to remember, and this is why nameservers exist on the Internet.

Vanity name servers

- A vanity nameserver is a name server that is branded to a website of your choice, instead of our public name servers. This can make your site appear more professional, by masking the fact you're using our name servers.

- With vanity name servers you are just hiding or masking the hostname of our public name servers, but the IP addresses and the physical servers handling your website's DNS requests would still be our public name servers.

Custom name servers

A custom name server allows you to run your own name server to respond to DNS requests for your domains. It is also a requirement for - VPS and dedicated server customers who wish to have root access on their servers, since with root access you can modify the DNS zones on the server, and having access to our public name server zones would be a security risk.

What name servers am I using?

- To check and see the name servers your domain name is currently set to use, you can either use our domain routing tool to view this DNS information, or by using the Windows command prompt following the steps below.

NS Record

- These records indicate which name servers are authoritative for the zone / domain. NS Records are primarily used if you want to break your domain into subdomains. Subdomains indicate you are delegating a portion of a domain name to a different group of name servers, thus creating NS records to point the name of the subdomain to different name servers.

Name: This will be the host for your domain which is actually a computer within your domain. Your domain name is automatically appended to your name. Assuming you had a subdomain sub.example.com that you wanted to delegate to ns10.example.com. The name of the record would be ‘sub’.

Value: The host name of the server, in this example ‘ns10.example.com.’ (including the trailing dot which stands for root). If you do not include the trailing dot your domain name will be appended to the end of the record causing incorrect results.

TTL: The TTL (Time to Live) is the amount of time your record will stay in cache on systems requesting your record (resolving nameservers, browsers, etc.). The TTL is set in seconds, so 60 is one minute, 1800 is 30 minutes, etc..

Systems that have a static IP should usually have a TTL of 1800 or higher. Systems that have a dynamic IP should usually have a TTL of 1800 of less.

The lower the TTL the more often a client will need to query the name servers for your host’s (record’s) IP address this will result in higher query traffic for your domain name. Where as a very high TTL can cause downtime when you need to switch your IPs quickly.