newbie Question

Kevin Darcy kcd at daimlerchrysler.com
Tue Jul 17 03:51:26 UTC 2001


DNS has a hierarchical tree-structure not just in terms of names, but underlying the naming structure is a
"delegation" structure too. In order for your nameserver to be asked questions about a branch of the namespace, the
owner of the "parent" branch needs to delegate that authority to you, e.g. example.com would be delegated from
"com". Without that delegation, nobody would know automatically that your nameserver was associated with that
domain. The only nameservers that would ask your nameserver about names in the domain would be those which were
explicitly configured to ask your nameserver about them. Obviously this doesn't scale very well, but "undelegated
domains" are sometimes used on small private networks.

For the gTLD's -- the "generic top-level domains": "com", "net" and "org" -- delegation is accomplished by
registering with a gTLD registrar, and this costs money. Registration in a ccTLD -- "country-code top-level domain"
-- e.g. "au" may or may not cost money, it depends on the country-code registrar, but I think most of them charge
these days, just because the volume has increased so much that they need to cover their costs (big multinational
corporations like ours seem to think they need domain names under practically *every* ccTLD). Note that each TLD has
its own set of rules about what names are acceptable and what are not, and also ccTLDs have varying rules and
procedures about how to register domains and how to make changes to them. Many ccTLDs force registrants to put names
in subdomains of the TLD, e.g. the co.uk subdomain for for-profit United Kingdom organizations, or the edu.au
subdomain for Australian educational institutions. The gTLDs don't impose any subdomain rules. Note also that you
shouldn't pick a domain name that infringes on a trademark, since the trademark owner may decide to force you to
give it up, thus possibly inconveniencing anyone who has come to rely on the name.

Enter "domain registration" in any search engine to get a list of companies willing to sell you domain-registration
services.


- Kevin

michael wrote:

> hope everyone don't mind with my newbie question
> since i played internet and know bind technology or sort of things like bind
> i began to wonder how can my dns server accessable by outside world ?
> as i know they wouldn't get to my dns server unless specified so or there would be a link somewhere in the middle
> but where can i get the link and is that for free ?
> thanks...





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