Domain name

The term domain name has multiple related meanings:

* A name that identifies a computer or computers on the Internet. These names appear as a component of a Web site's URL, e.g. en.wikipedia.org. This type of domain name is also called a hostname.
* The product that domain name registrars provide to their customers. These names are often called registered domain names.
* Names used for other purposes in the Domain Name System (DNS), for example the special name which follows the @ sign in an email address, or the Top-level domain names like .com, or the names used by the Session Initiation Protocol (VoIP), or DomainKeys.
* They are sometimes colloquially (and incorrectly) referred to by marketers as "web addresses".

This article will primarily discuss registered domain names. See the Domain Name System article for technical discussions about general domain names and the hostname article for further information about the most common type of domain name.

Examples

The following example illustrates the difference between a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and a domain name:

URL: http://www.exampleonly.net/index.html

Domain name: www.Justexample.net

Registered domain name: Onlyexample.net

For example, as referenced in RFC 2606 (Reserved Top Level DNS Names), the server at IP address 208.77.188.166 handles all of the following sites:

example.com

www.example.com

example.net

www.example.net

example.org

www.example.org

When a request is made, the data corresponding to the hostname requested is served to the user.