Domain name in internet is like a name to your shop. When you want to have a business, you need a name to your company or business. You also need a place to sell your things. The name of your shop is domain name, while the place or the building of your shop is the hosting. We discuss about the domain name first before we go to the hosting things. A domain name is an identification label that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet, based on the Domain Name System (DNS). Domain names are used in various networking contexts and application-specific naming and addressing purposes. Domain name is a name that identifies one or more IP addresses in the internet. Domain name is also an internet web site address, a name of a computer in the internet.

Selecting a suitable domain URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is important as it has a vital influence on your marketing strength. By your domain name, your customer will get the idea or impression about what your business is all about. The domain name must be relevant to the products or services that you are offering. For example, domain name www.study.com or www.mycampus.com is of course is related to study. Try your best not to mislead your customer. People will get angry or irritated if you mislead them. For example, if you sells DVD online, do not use a domain name like www.kuehkampung.com or www.myuniversity.com.

DNS

DNS is short for Domain Name System (or Service or Server), an Internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses. Because domain names are alphabetic, they're easier to remember. The Internet however, is really based on IP addresses. Every time you use a domain name, therefore, a DNS service must translate the name into the corresponding IP address. For example, the domain name www.example.com might translate to 198.105.232.4. The DNS system is, in fact, its own network. If one DNS server doesn't know how to translate a particular domain name, it asks another one, and so on, until the correct IP address is returned.

Domain names come with different back extensions like .com, .net, .biz, .org, .gov and so on. The .com represent commercial (business), .org for organization, .info for information, .mil for military, .net for network organizations.

Countries and their own domain extensions

All countries has their own domain extension. For example..

.ae	United Arab Emirates
.af	Afghanistan
.al	Albania
.ar	Argentina
.au	Australia
.bd	Bangladesh
.bn	Brunei
.br	Brazil
.ca	Canada
.cu	Cuba
.de	Germany
.dk	Denmark
.eg	Egypt
.es	Spain
.my	Malaysia

Because the Internet is based on IP addresses, not domain names, every Web server requires a Domain Name System (DNS) server to translate domain names into IP addresses.

These 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, net 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 that wish to connect local area networks to the Internet, run web sites, or create other publicly accessible Internet resources.

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

Individual Internet host computers use domain names as host identifiers, or hostnames. Hostnames are the leaf labels in the domain name system usually without further subordinate domain name space. Hostnames appear as a component in Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for Internet resources such as web sites.

Domain names are also used as simple identification labels to indicate ownership or control of a resource. Examples are the realm identifiers used in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the DomainKeys used to verify DNS domains in e-mail systems, and in many other Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs).

An important purpose of domain names is to provide easily recognizable and memorizable names to numerically addressed Internet resources. This abstraction allows any resource (e.g., website) to be moved to a different physical location in the address topology of the network, globally or locally in an intranet. Such a move usually requires changing the IP address of a resource and the corresponding translation of this IP address to and from its domain name.

Domain names are often referred to simply as domains and domain name registrants are frequently referred to as domain owners, although domain name registration with a registrar does not confer any legal ownership of the domain name, only an exclusive right of use.

Have your own domain name

It is good to have your own domain name which truly reflects the nature of your business or your website. For example, the domain name for this website is online2money which glaringly reflects its purpose - to try to make money online.

No domain name is identical in the whole world. For example, you cannot purchase a domain name www.cnn.com, or www.yahoo.com. You have to create your own domain name.

Buying a domain name should be one of the easiest task. But remember that your domain name should give people a good idea of what they will find if they go to your website.

First, you must check the avaiability of the domain name that you wanted. If the domain name is available, you can purchase it. You are required to fill some information about the purchasing agent (yourself).

To register for a domain name will cost you from as low as RM29 to RM100 per year. This site's domain name www.money2online.com cost me only RM29.00 per year. I believe that this is the cheapest in Malaysia. Other company will charge you RM55 per year for a .com, .net, or .org domain name. If you wanted a domain name with .my as the extention, you need a registered company. The .my or .edu.my extensions will cost you RM100 per month. For my websites, I register my domain name with www.netkl and www.exabyte.com.my. Yahoo! also provide this domain name registering servises. It will cost as low as US4.90 per month. Its expensive to my pocket, frankly speaking.

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