The Internet for Beginners

Domain names and Registrars

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Domain names eg myname.com, hotmail.co.uk, myfirm.pk These are looked after by a central authority, called ICANN. ICANN delegates responsibility for allocating or awarding names in the different countries around the world. Those countries in turn appoint an authority to look after their names.

So any names that ends in a .com, .net or .org is an American name and is subject to the authority of an organisation called Internic. Likewise any name ending in .uk is presided over by a British organisation called Nominet. Microsoft, when they wanted “hotmail.co.uk” will have had to ask Nominet if they could use it. Myfirm.pk, because it ends in .pk is presided over by PKNIC who can be found here http://pknic.net.pk/ PKNIC really are the authority on all names that end in .pk If someone contradicts something published on PKNIC’s web site about myfirm.pk, then that person is wrong. Internic, Nominet and PKNIC are all name authorities usually referred to as “Registrars”

Name Authorities called registrars.
These people are responsible for keeping a record of who owns a domain name and also for one and only one technical role – which is to report to the global Internet name system (BIND DNS) which computer knows about all the technical stuff to do with a domain. That last bit is essential for email arriving and web pages being visible as well as a bunch of other things. Obviously it isn’t that straightforward. That outsourcing of this make-it-happen technical is invariably a hierarchy of computers which pass requests for information further down until the system reaches a computer, for example, the server your web designer is keeping your website on.

Registrar agent.
This is a person or organisation who deals with a Name Authority on your behalf.

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