Definition:
A domain is the unique address used to find a given we page. For example, in this case, the domain would be: ‘www.arimetrics.com/en.
The domain is used to make navigation easier and more accessible to people.
Links that are made up of the domain plus “/text” are called slug. In the case of our digital glossary the link would be www.arimetrics.com/en/digital-glossary
Structure of a domain
Domains have, as a rule, two or three levels.
The first level is the root domain,which can be of type . gTLD or CCTLD. This type of domains is explained in the following section.
The second level is the name that has been chosen to refer to the domain. In our case Arimetrics.
The subdomain is a derivative of the second-level domain and is usually www.
Types of domains
There are currently two types of domains:
- gTLD or top-level domains:
They are the ones that represent a series of names and organizations.
Initially, these domains were: COM, NET, ORG, EDU, GOB and MIL,which were later joined by others since there are currently 22 domains of this type.
- ccTLD or Geographic Top-level Domain:
They are those domains managed by non-profit organizations in each country and supervised by ICANN for the administration of territorial domains.
A couple of examples of a ccTLD would be .es for Spain or .eu for European Union countries.
There is a third type of domain called mixed and that is a mixture between a domain of type gTLD and a domain of type ccTLD. An example of these mixed domains would be www.nombre.gob.es
It is theInternet Assigned Numbers Authorityand responsible for global coordination for DNS Root domains and .int and .arpa domains, IP addressing, and other Internet Protocolresources.
It is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. This non-profit organization is dedicated to preserving the stability of the Internet through consensus-based processes.
InterNIC is a U.S. Ministry of Commerce service that collaborates with the IANA for the management of public disputes related to domain name registration.
Although these are the regulatory bodies in North America,there are also other similar regional organizations (ROs/Regional Organizations) in the rest of the planet:
- CENTR (Europe),
- AFTLD (Africa)
- APTLD (Asia and Pacific)
- LACNIC and LACTLD (Latin America and the Caribbean)