domain names : Java Glossary

Introduction

This essay that will tell you more than you wanted to know about domain names, ownership rights, DNS (Domain Name Service), TLDs (Top Level Domains), country code TLDs, domain name speculation, resources for buying domain names, wet blanket caveats and how to buy a domain name without a broker.

Ownership Rights

Whois

1. Who owns this IP?
2. I know the domain name. What IP does it map so I can put an entry in my hosts. file.
3. Who owns this domain name?
4. Where on the planet is this IP broadcasting from?
5. What is my face IP?

1. Who Owns This IP?

• GeekTools: find owner of a given IP.
• arin.net
• whois.sc
• CyberAbuse.org: find owner given IP or DNS name.

2. Finding the IP From a Domain Name

• www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois for .com, .net and .org
• www.cira.ca for .ca
• whoisreport.com for .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .us. This search is more flexible letting you find usaweatherreport.??? by typing just weather. The best way to figure out what all the option check boxes are for is just to tick them one at a time and see what the effect is.
• Whois Source: various TLDs, also allows lookup by IP.
• You can use TweakDUN to look up DNS names and add their ips to your host file. You can also use it to lookup up DNS names with the DNS abilities of your computer and its gateway.

3. Finding out who owns a Domain

For the third question (who owns this domain) use one of these whois services:

• Checkdomain.com. Does not make you take a typing test to use the service as many others do.
• 101Domain.com. Does not make you take a typing test to use the service as many others do.
• www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois for .com, .net and .org
• www.cira.ca for .ca
• whoisreport.com for .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .us. This search is more flexible letting you find usaweatherreport.??? by typing just weather. The best way to figure out what all the option check boxes are for is just to tick them one at a time and see what the effect is.
• Whois Source: various TLDs, also allows lookup by IP.

4. Finding out Where a Domain/IP is Located

For third question (where is the domain located) use one of these Ip locator services:

• Discussion of kludges to get an approximate answer.
• IP Locator
• ShowMyIP.com: just tell your face IP, and where you are. Hopefully you already know.
• netgeo.
• Google geographical location ip address
• MaxMind sells code to obtain the country, region, city, latitude, and longitude of any IP address. This would often be an ISP rather than the actual company responsible for content.

5. Finding our Your Face IP

Ways of Finding Your Face IP
Logo	Link	Notes
	Your face IP:[38.103.63.61]	Your face IP is displayed at the bottom of every page of this website. I do this with SSI.
	IPchicken.com	tells your face ip, and which ports you have open. They also tell you your face name, e.g. your URL on the web, possibly temporarily assigned for your connection. It might look something like this S010609991195576dda.gv.shawcable.net or d207-81-138-97.bchsia.telus.net That is not my real one. I don’t want to encourage hackers.
	checkip.dyndns.org:8245/	Offers many other services as well.
	whatismyipaddress.com	has many annoying ads you must close to discover the answer.
—	—	In a Servlet you can use javax.servlet. ServletRequest.getRemotePort().

DNS

TLDs

The official TLDs are: .aero .biz .coop .com .edu .gov .info .mil .museum .name .net .org .pro

The unofficial TLDs are: .cam .mp3 .agent .art .arts .asia .auction .aus .bank .cam .chat .church .club .corp .dds .design .dns2go .e .email .exp .fam .family .faq .fed .film .firm .free .fun .g .game .games .gay .ger .globe .gmbh .golf .gov .help .hola .i .inc .int .jpn .k12 .kids .law .learn .llb .llc .llp .lnx .love .ltd .mag .mail .med .media .mp3 .netz .nic .nom .npo .per .pol .prices .radio .rsc .school .scifi .sea .service .sex .shop .sky .soc .space .sport .tech .tour .travel .usvi .video .web .wine .wir .wired .zine .zoo

Then there are the two letter country codes: .ac .ad .ae .af .ag .ai .al .am .an .ao .aq .ar .as .at .au .aw .ax .az .ba .bb .bd .be .bf .bg .bh .bi .bj .bm .bn .bo .br .bs .bt .bv .bw .by .bz .ca .cc .cd .cf .cg .ch .ci .ck .cl .cm .cn .co .cr .cs .cu .cv .cx .cy .cz .de .dj .dk .dm .do .dz .ec .ee .eg .eh .er .es .et .fi .fj .fk .fm .fo .fr .fx .ga .gb .gd .ge .gf .gg .gh .gi .gl .gm .gn .gp .gq .gr .gs .gt .gu .gw .gy .hk .hm .hn .hr .ht .hu .id .ie .il .im .in .io .iq .ir .is .it .je .jm .jo .jp .ke .kg .kh .ki .km .kn .kp .kr .kw .ky .kz .la .lb .lc .li .lk .lr .ls .lt .lu .lv .ly .ma .mc .md .mg .mh .mk .ml .mm .mn .mo .mp .mq .mr .ms .mt .mu .mv .mw .mx .my .mz .na .nc .ne .nf .ng .ni .nl .no .np .nr .nu .nz .om .pa .pe .pf .pg .ph .pk .pl .pm .pn .pr .ps .pt .pw .py .qa .re .ro .ru .rw .sa .sb .sc .sd .se .sg .sh .si .sj .sk .sl .sm .sn .so .sr .st .sv .sy .sz .tc .td .tf .tg .th .tj .tk .tl .tm .tn .to .tp .tr .tt .tv .tw .tz .ua .ug .uk .um .us .uy .uz .va .vc .ve .vg .vi .vn .vu .wf .ws .ye .yt .yu .za .zm .zw

Country Code TLDs

Domain Name Format

The people who designed this scheme were not thinking clearly. The hyphen should have been a noise character that is ignored. Then mind-prod.com and mindprod.com would be considered the same domain. Users would not need to remember where the dashes go. You would not need to buy all the dash variant domain names and protect them all from remoras.

Domain Name Speculation

The hope of sudden riches has fueled a fad, speculation in domain names. People lease domain names for $19.00 USD per year from Network Solutions (née Internic) (the body that hands out .com names) plus a handling fee to some broker. Most Internet domain name brokers charge a percentage of the sale price, not a flat fee. Speculators hope some company will want the name and pay some considerably higher price. Some names have gone for millions of dollars. Some speculators lease out a name to one or more people, especially a prestigious email address. Of course, most of names purchased for speculation have not sold at all. Nearly every name in the dictionary, every slang word and every slang phrase has been purchased. Every misspelling and variant of popular site names such as altavista.com have been snapped up by remoras, people hoping to pick up stray hits. There are few reasonable names left speculators have not taken. Right now, there is a domain name registered for every three US citizens.

You have to pay $19.00 USD a year to keep your registration. If you don’t pay, it goes up for grabs again. If you do pay, no one can take it away from you, except the courts. Recently expired domain names are a prime source for speculators.

Some countries such as Turkmenistan ( .tm), Guernsey ( .gg), Jersey ( .je) and the Isle of Man ( .im), encourage foreign companies to register. Others such as South Africa (.za) insist the servers be on South African soil. Check with iana to see who is in charge of the country or top level domain that interests you. Often they won’t even have a website, just an email address. Normally you go through a broker, so finding that information is his problem.

In researching this, I came across some clearly fraudulent domain-selling sites. Especially if you plan to buy a non-standard TLD, do some research on your broker; make sure you really get world-wide exclusive use of the name and that others could really find you on the net. It is not much use to have a name that is not properly hooked into the global DNS system. You should be able to find lots of sites on the net using the proposed TLD if all is on the up and up. You might see if any of those sites will be willing to tell you the email address of their broker and how they like him. I am particularly suspicious of the .shop and .rec domains because of conflicting information I read.

Resources For Buying Domain Names

If you want to play this speculation game, or if you simply want to find a suitable domain name for your own business, here are some resources:

Domain Name Resources
body	TLDs they manage	All prices are in mindprod.com CurrCon international currency Applet needs Java installed for it to display prices in any world currency.
body	TLDs they manage	All prices are in mindprod.com CurrCon international currency Applet needs Java installed for it to display prices in any world currency.
ICANN	the global authority. Wholesaler for: .com, .net, .edu, and .org. New top level domains include : .aero (air transport, for services & companies dealing with air travel), .biz (business & corporations). .coop (co-operatives) .info (newspapers, libraries, etc.) .museum (museums, archival institutions, & exhibitions) .name (individuals and personal websites, e.g. www.Roedy.Green.name. Note you own only www.roedy.green.name not roger.green.name the way you would with other domains. Your email address becames roedy@green.name, not roedy@roedy.green.name.) .pro (accountants, lawyers and physicians)	The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The body in charge of assiging all Internet DNS names and numbers.
IANA	Part of ICANN	Internet Assigned Number Authority. Manage handing out country codes and other top level domains. Best source for contact of who is in charge in each country and top level domain. You don’t deal with them directly. They are the wholesaler to assign IP numbers.
101Doman	sell domain names.	.eu .com .net .org .biz .bz .info .cc .tv .ws .us .name .ae .com.af .ag .com.ai .com.al .am .com.ar .as .at .com.au .bb .be .bg .com.bh .bn .com.bo .com.br .bs .bz .ca .cc .cd .ch .cl .cn .com.cn .com.co .co.cr .cx .cz .de .dj .dk .com.do .dz .com.ec .com.eg .es .eu .fi .fm .com.fo .fr .com.fr .ge .com.gi .gl .gm .gr .gs .com.gt .com.hk .hn .hr .hu .ie .co.il .co.in .ir .is .it .jm .com.jo .jp .co.ke .com.kh .com.ki .co.kr .kw .kz .com.lb .li .lk .lt .lu .md .mn .mo .ms .mt .mu .com.mx .com.my .nc .com.ng .nl .no .nu .co.nz .om .pa .com.pa .com.pe .pe .com.pk .ph .com.pl .com.pr .pt .com.py .ro .ru .com.sa .com.sc .se .com.sg .sh .si .sk .sm .st .co.sv .tc .tf .co.th .tk .tm .tn .to .com.tr .tv .com.tw .com.ua .co.uk .us .com.uy .uy .com.ve .ve .vg .com.vn .vu .ws .yu .co.za .au.com .br.com cn.com .de.com .eu.com .gb.com .gb.net .hu.com .no.com .qc.com .ru.com .sa.com .se.com .se.net .uk.com .uk.net .us.com .uy.com .za.com .biz .info .aero .name .pro .museum .coop
Altavista	search engine	Search for "domain names" to find domain names for sale.
Alternic.net	various e.g.: .art .arts .asia .aus .bank .cam .dds .design .email .exp .fam .faq .film .firm .fun .gay .games .ger .globe .gmbh .help .i .inc .info .jpn .kids .law .learn .llb .lnx .ltd .mail .mag .med .media .netz .nic .nom .per .prices .radio .rsc .sea .service .sex .sky .space .sport .shop .tour .travel .usvi .web .wir .wired .wine .xxx .zine .zoo	Non-standard TLDs.
Afilias	.info	also handles registrations in German and umlaut domains. It is the top level manager. It does not deal directly with the public.
APNIC.net	various e.g.: .cn .id .in .jp .kp .kr .mm .ph .th .tw	national domain names for Asia and the Pacific.
ARIN	IP numbers	American Registry For Internet Numbers. Handle assigning IP numbers (not domain names) for North America, South America and sub-Saharan Africa. Unless you want to buy thousands of IP’s you would contact an ISP instead.
BB-online	broker for .ie .as .no .se .tm, .uk .co.uk .uk.com	Irish company. I have had no dealings with them, but they have an impressive web site.
CIRA.ca	.ca	Canadian Internet Registration Authority. They are in charge of all .ca names for Canada. Individuals and small ISPs don’t deal directly with them. They must deal through certified registrars.
CNNames	.cn .tw	Register Chinese domain names, .cn .com.cn .net.cn .org.cn
co.za	.co.za	South African commercial domains
CoreNic	list of brokers	Trade organisation that maintains a global list of brokers who will help you buy domain names.
	book	A comprehensive guide to domain name speculation. It will show you how to buy domain names without using a broker. It also talks about the legal issues revolving around trademarks vs. domain names and how various disputes over domain names have been resolved. recommend book⇒Domain Name Handbook   paperback ISBN13: 978-0-87930-515-4 ISBN10: 0-87930-515-0 publisher: Publishers Group West published: 1998-06-01 by: Ellen & Peter Rony High stakes and strategies in Cyberspace. abe books.co.uk abe books.ca amazon.co.uk amazon.ca abe books.de chapters.indigo.ca amazon.de abe books.com abe books.fr amazon.com amazon.fr barnes and noble.com abe books.it powells.com iberlibro.com abe books anz
dns2go	free domain names of the form xxxx.dns2go.com	The interesting thing about dns2go, is that you don’t even need a permanent IP to have a domain. You can have one with dial up via SLIP or PPP where you get a different IP every time, or with ADSL or cable TCP/IP with DHCP dynamic IP assignment. You can run game servers, mail servers, webservers etc. using a permanent name.
dotbiztoday.com	.biz	$70.00 USD for two years.
Domain Baron	sells domain names that are already registered.	They have names for sale, and can provide you with links to other resources. If you want to speculate, 10% of your problem is finding good names to buy, and 90% is finding customers to sell them to. They will list your name on their site. Run by my former housemate Dave Bedford who has been badly bitten by the domain name speculation bug. He owns names such as GovernmentOfCanada.com The Canadian government recently filed suit with WIPO to simply take them away from him. If you want to play this game, be aware that when you pull the tails of tigers, the tigers have deep pockets to hire lawyers.
Dotster	sells domain names and web hosting .biz .bz .ca .cc .com .info .name .net .nu .org .sr .tv .us .ws	$6.00 USD per year for .name $15.00 USD per year for .biz, .com, .info, .net, .org, .us $20.00 USD per year for .ca $30.00 USD per year for .bz $35.00 USD per year for .ws $40.00 USD per year for .cc $45.00 USD per year for .nu $50.00 USD per year for .tv $250.00 USD per year for .sr
DOT.TV	.tv	Theoretically for the country of Tuvalu. Advertised as "cool". Domain names for $50.00 USD a year. Their website now seems to artfully dodge the issue of price like some snake oil salesman.
DynDNS	38 free domains plus .bz .cc .cn .com .info .name .net .org .tv .co.uk .org.uk .us	$15.00 USD per year though .cc .cn and .tv cost extra. DynDNS offers three free services of interest to people who host webservers on their home machines,
fapesp.br	.br	Brazil
FCN.net	fcn.net	They parcel out higher order parts of that one name.
iana	.int	International Treaty Organisations
iana	.us	USA
godaddy.com	.com .us .biz .info .net .org .ws .name .tv .cc .de .jp .be .at .uk .nz .cn .tw	$4.00 USD if you use their web hosting services. Allows non-techies to set up webstores.
Inter-Corporate	.com .org .ca .net .edu and any others.	They will broker buying your domain name for you. They charge only a flat $19.00 USD per year (i.e. zero markup on the Verisign Network Solutions/InterNIC fee) for .com, .org, .net, .edu and $50.00 CAD per year for .ca . This is the lowest brokerage fee I have heard of, and they give the best service of any ISP I have ever dealt with. Very good people. The price includes the use of Inter-Corporate’s secondary DNS servers, and when used for the purpose of selling domain names, those are the only fees. They don’t ask for a percentage of the sale, and the setup fee includes the final transfer as well. They can also host websites, do HTML, artwork etc. Email Randolf Richardson <randolf@inter-corporate.com> for more information.
Internet Service Centre	.aero .biz .coop .info .museum .name .pro	$24.00 USD per year. Australian company.
MultilingualNames.net	.com .bz	Specialise in multilingual names with accented letters, Chinese, or embedded symbols (allowed in .bz only).$35.00 USD per year for .bz and $29.00 USD per year for .com.
NamesForEveryone.com	.name	$70.00 USD for two years. Currently only taking re-registrations.
Network Solutions (née Internic aka Verisign Network Solutions)	.biz .bz .cc .com .edu .gs .info .ms .net .nu .org .tc .tv .us .vg .ws	They have an online database of which names are taken, and who has which names, and when they are due to expire if the owner does not renew. They retail .com names for $35.00 USD per year. They retail .name names for $29.00 USD per year. To talk directly to ICANN, a broker must ante up $50000.00 USD Some registration companies have done this then folded leaving the state of some of their registrations in limbo. Internic is the original and presumably most stable source.
new.net	.agent .arts .auction .chat .church .club .family .free .game .gmbh .golf .hola .inc .kids .law .llc .llp .love .ltd .med .mp3 .school .scifi .shop .soc .sport .tech .travel .video .xxx	They seem no longer to be soliciting business since the home page requires a login. Not everyone will be able to access these names since browsers don’t recognise these non-standard domains. These people are crooks. They surreptitiously install browser add-ons to make their non-standard domains visible. On top of that they charge as much as real domains,$30.00 USD per year.
nic.je	.gg .je	The Channel Islands .gg (Guernsey, Alderney, Sark) and .je (Jersey) domains
nic.mil	.mil	American military
NIC.mx	.mx	Mexico
NJStar Unicode Domain Names	.com .net	Chinese, Japanese and Korean, non-ASCII domain names.
PIR	.org	in charge of all .org. Does not deal with the public directly. You go through a registrar.
registration.fed.gov	.gov	American federal government
RIPE.net	various e.g. .at .be .ch .cz .de .dk .es .fi .fr .gr .hu .ie .is .nl .no .pl .pt .se .uk	national domain names for Europe
sedo.de	various e.g. .at .be .ch .cz .de .dk .es .fi .fr .gr .hu .ie .is .nl .no .pl .pt .se .uk	broker for trading domain names in Europe. Appraisal service for domain names.
Voxdomains.com	.com .info .ca .us .net .org .biz .name .tv .co.uk .me.uk org.uk	$4.75 USD to $40.00 USD per year.
webtld.com	.web	Handle just this one TLD.
webnames.ca	.ca	$50.00 CAD per year. They primarily deal with ISPs not individuals.

Wet Blanket Caveats

Consider the crazed tulip speculation in renaissance Holland. Prices on a single bulb were bid up to astronomical levels — $30000.00 USD a bulb. Then, suddenly, people noticed that bulbs actually had little real value, and the whole economy collapsed. I am watching a similar domain name gambling fever gripping my friends. The basic rule of gambling is, don’t risk more than you can afford to lose. Consider also the law of supply and demand. There is a very large pool of potential domain names and only a few customers willing to part with any substantial dollars for one. If you want to make money, you will have to be very clever.

Consider also that IANA could at any time make available additional TLDs such as .store and .ski which will dilute the value of .com names.

People are buying up the silliest names that I doubt will ever sell. It might be worth while to study the market to see what names are selling before leaping in with both feet. My student project domain database would help you make intelligent buying decisions.

On the other hand, if you think you may want a domain name for yourself any time in the next ten years, act quickly to buy it. Otherwise you may be stuck paying through the nose to speculators for anything half-way decent.

How to Buy a Domain Name Without A Broker

You don’t have to host your website with the same ISP you get your Internet access from. Shop around for the best deal. Consider the ISP’s reputation, speed of his servers and of course the costs of setup, the IP, disk storage, hits, cost of additional domain names going to the same server. Most ISP’s will sell you a bundle, including the brokering to buy you the domain name. Some sites will host free if you post ads for them, however that looks tacky.

To register, you need some server computer to service browser hits on your domain name. Further, you want to get your domain name out on the web, known, indexed in search engines etc. so that potential buyers of the domain name can find you.

1. Check with domainnamebuyersguide.com to get a ranked list of accredited resellers of domain names. Network Solutions is the original and the most likely to stay in business. It does not rank as high as others in terms of service, price or legal freedom. Unlike its competitors, it offers both email-based and web-based registration. Email registration is preferable for three reasons:
   1. Simplicity (no clicking on a few dozen web pages to make a single change to a DNS server or mailing address)
   2. Security (web sites can be easily hacked but eMail remains relatively secure since mail servers are located through DNS, and DNS is tightly controlled from the top down). You can also use PGP and encrypted passwords.
   3. Bulk management can easily be automated (updating 300 Internet domains through a web interface is excessively time consuming as opposed to using a PERL script to send 300 eMails to make these same changes.)
   The domain name buyers’ guide recommend’s the Australian company InternetNamesWW.com as their top choice. Usually your ISP has a broker he prefers to deal with. Every broker has different and relatively complicated registration procedures. It is not worth picking a new broker just to save $5 and having to deal with unfamiliar procedures. Normally you should follow your ISP’s recommendation. If you are registering or reregistering 100 names or more, consider using registerfree.com for a deep discount.
2. Check at Network Solutions that your .com domain name is not already taken. There are delays in the system. A name that appears to be free may not actually be free. It is first come, first served. Don’t dawdle. My speculating friends have many a time lost a good name to others by waiting even a few hours to think it over.
3. Click on Register a Domain Name.
4. Fill in the New Domain Registration For field with your domain, e.g. orgasmatron.com. Don’t include the www.
5. Select new registration.
6. .com names are for companies. Fill in the company name in the Organization Name field. .org names are for non-profit organisations such as charities.
7. Fill in the Organization (Registrant) Information name and address. You will need to encode your country using the two letter codes shown above, e.g. US for the USA and CA for Canada.
8. In the Administrative/Agent, Technical and Billing Contact information section, leave the NIC Handle fields blank, and click the provide contact information options. You will later be assigned a NIC handle e.g. RG9999 that you can use in place of filling in the contact information so you don’t have to keep repeating the contact information four times for every domain you buy.
9. In the Name Server section, for Primary Server Hostname fill in your new domain e.g. orgasmatron.com, that is presuming your ISP will set it up as a DNS server. You should get instruction from the ISP who will host your website on what to use.
10. For the Primary Server net address fill in the permanent IP where this domain will be hosted, e.g. 127.0.0.99 This is the only tricky part. You will have to get this from your ISP. They will charge you for it. Because of the clerical overhead, you can’t buy IP’s singly, except from an ISP. It is possible to share the same IP among several domains.
11. For Secondary Server Hostname fill in your ISP’s domain, without the www, e.g. inter-corporate.com. You should get instruction from the ISP who will host your website on what to use.
12. For the Secondary Server net address fill in the your ISP server’s backup secondary IP e.g. 127.0.0.100. You should get instruction from the ISP who will host your website on what to use.
13. Leave the optional information blank.
14. After you make your submission, Verisign Network Solutions will send you an agreement via email, and you send it back to them. This process ping pongs back and forth with ever stronger confirmation that domain is yours until eventually they send you a bill and you pay it and they confirm the payment. Then the domain is really yours.
15. Since you have 90 days to pay, many speculators "buy" hundreds of names. If they can’t sell them in 90 days, they just let them lapse. This is not good for Network Solutions since they have just as much processing cost as in a real sale. Network Solutions often holds up sales for manual adjudication in an attempt to discourage this practice.
16. For more details on how to register a domain name see Network Solutions.
17. Later you can return to Verisign Network Solutions to update any of the information. There are several schemes you can use to ensure that only you modify the records. See Updating Domain Name and Associated Records at Verisign Network Solutions for details.
18. When your registristation is due to expire, you will start getting what at first appear to be invoices from all sorts of companies asking you to renew. You might want to change registrars, but don’t blindly pay these "invoices". Make sure you are paying the right company. Verisign Network Solutions sends bills under the name Netsol.com. This must lose them a lot of business from people thinking the invoices are phony.