Knowledge Base

Domain names are the human-centric Internet addresses that compliment the computer-centric Internet Protocol (IP) numbers that are used to locate specific web-sites. For example, if www.cbc.ca was entered in the location bar of a browser, the CBC website would appear. Likewise, if the IP numbers 159.33.1.138 were entered into the location bar the same web site would appear. The protocol used to transmit data over the Internet -- TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) only understands numbers, but to make it easier for humans, the Domain Name System (DNS) is used as it is easier for us to remember names than long strings of numbers.

Domain names are structured in a hierarchical system that is organized from right to left. For example consider the following domain name of the fictitious search engine "eye can’t find it:"

http://www.eyecantfindit.ca

The top part of the hierarchy is the part of the name after the dot (.). This section is called the top-level domain. In this case it is ca (also referred to as dot-ca), which is Canada’s name space on the Internet. The section before the dot is called the second-level domain, which is the subsection of the top-level domain. In this case it is eyecantfindit. The www section indicates that the "eyecantfindit" search engine is being hosted on a server that handles world wide web requests called a web server.