Let's talk domains. What's in a name... or what is a domain?

"As you name your boat, so it will float."

At all times, names for people, ships, and cities have received special attention. Names were considered fateful, and the phrase used as the epigraph to this article appeared long before the famous cartoon. Names are even more important in business. Businessmen are willing to pay big money for a catchy name, and marketers exploit them to attract users' attention. The domain industry is no exception to this rule. A domain name is no less important for business than a company name or a child's name. In our "Let's Talk About Domains" column, we plan to cover everything related to domain names, hosting, and other aspects of the domain industry. And in the first article, we'll try to understand what a domain is.

Wikipedia tells us that"A domain name is a symbolic name used to identify areas—units of administrative autonomy on the Internet—within a higher-level area. Each of these areas is called a domain."

In simpler and more understandable terms, a domain is a name for a website. We use domains to indicate the names of websites that make up the WWW (World Wide Web) structure. Every website actually has an IP address—a digital identifier that indicates the website's location on the internet. An IP address can be compared to a person's home address or mobile phone number. However, entering the numbers that make up an IP address when browsing the internet is inconvenient. Remembering the sequence of numbers for each website is practically impossible. It's like remembering every mobile phone number. Few people can boast of remembering such numbers, even for close friends. A domain effectively replaces an IP address. By entering a domain in the browser's address bar, we essentially command it to convert the domain name into the website's IP address and navigate to that address.

The system that links domains and IP addresses is also called DNS – Domain Name System. Thanks to DNS, we can specify domains instead of IP addresses and be confident that a browser or other program will understand us correctly and navigate to the IP address corresponding to the domain name, after which it will display the desired website.

Examples of domains are nic.ua, google.com, ru.wikipedia.org, mts.com.ua.

As you can see, a domain consists of several parts. For example, in the domain nic.ua, the domain is often thought of as just the word "nic," but in fact, the domain is the full spelling of nic.ua, lenta.ru, and pravda.com.ua.

The parts that make up a domain name are also called domains. After the period comes the top-level domain, before it comes the second-level domain, before that comes the third-level domain, and so on. For example, the domain name pravda.com.ua is registered as a third-level domain in the .COM.UA domain. And the domain nic.ua is registered in the .UA top-level domain. Top-level or first-level domains are sometimes also called domain zones.

There are situations where domain names may differ only in their domain extensions—the top-level domain. In this case, they will be different domains and may even belong to different companies. For example, nic.ua is a Ukrainian domain name registrar, while nic.ru is a Russian company offering similar services. Ria.ru is the website of the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, while Ria.ua is a Ukrainian classifieds site.

In the following materials, we will discuss the different types of top-level domains and the generally accepted classification of domains.