How Do Domain Names Work?

When someone with a computer connected to the Internet wants to communicate with another computer, they need to tell their software what computer they want it to connect to.  Computers on the Internet use IP addresses to locate one another.  Say you have the need for a web site for your company and you want to look at what Weboniks has to offer.  Your computer can only connect to the Weboniks computer if it has the IP (Internet Protocol) address of it (which happens to be 64.177.0.170).  So far, this is similar to the telephone — you couldn't call Weboniks unless you knew the telephone number.

If you knew that www.weboniks.com was hosted on a machine with the IP address of 64.177.0.170, you could just type http://64.177.0.170/ into your browser.  Similarly, if you happened to remember or have written down someone's phone number you could just dial it.  However, most people don't want to deal with these obscure numbers.  The domain name system allows you to type http://www.weboniks.com into your browser instead.  The software on your computer then translates this name into the IP address for you and makes the connection.  It's as if your phone were smart enough to transparently call directory assistance if you told it to call someone whose phone number you and it didn't know.

Here's how the translation works:  When your browser sees the name www.weboniks.com entered it asks the computer's network software to go get the corresponding IP address for it. Your computer's network software then asks your Internet Service Provider's DNS (Domain Name Server) for the IP address of www.weboniks.com.   Your computer knows how to find the ISP's DNS because you gave it the addresses when you set up your connection to the Internet.  The ISP probably gave you the IP numbers of its DNS to be entered into the network configuration.  (More recent systems can set themselves up automatically, so these details are hidden.)  In turn, the ISP's DNS asks Internic for the address of the DNS that manages all of weboniks.com.  The ISP's DNS then contacts the Weboniks DNS and asks it for the IP address for www.weboniks.com.  You can think of this as calling the phone company's directory assistance number and asking for the number of Weboniks, and then calling the Weboniks operator to ask for the number a particular person.  The IP address is then sent back to your computer, which gives it to your browser, which contacts the www.weboniks.com computer directly via the IP address.

Weboniks is happy to provide the following information to you regarding domain names:

Please contact us if you require assistance registering a domain name. Weboniks.com recommends and utilizes Dotster for all of our domain name registration needs.