Glossary of domain terms

Glossary of domain terms

This glossary will continue to grow as we find words that are common in the field of domains. These are terms that are used daily by our technicians and are accepted as standard.
 
Contact: Natural persons or entities associated with the registration of the domain. Normally, third parties with specific responsibilities will use the domain contacts to determine who acts in specific cases related to the domain. There are usually 3 types of contacts associated with the registration of a domain: Administrative Contact, Billing Contact and Technical Contact.
 
Administrative Contact - Administrative Contact: Natural person, entity or organization authorized to interact with the registrar or the registry on behalf of the owner of the domain. The administrative contact is able to answer non-technical questions related to the registration of the domain name and the SLD Holder. In all cases, the administrative contact is seen as the authoritative point of contact for the domain name.
 
Billing Contact - Billing Contact: Natural person, entity or organization designated to receive the invoice for the domain registration and for subsequent renewals.
 
Technical Contact - Technical Contact: The natural person or organization responsible for the technical management of the delegated zone. This contact usually maintains the DNS for the domain. The technical contact must be able to answer technical questions related to the domain name and the entire delegated zone.
 
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC): Unit of time measurement that refers to the Greenwich meridian. Normally, ICANN and WIPO use universal time when referring to dates and legal rules.
 
Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD): TLD that contains a 2-character abbreviation, as defined by ISO 3166-1 (Codes for the Representation of Names of Countries and Their Subdivisions). In November 1999, there were 243 registered ccTLDs. Some examples are .es for Spain, .us for the United States, .ca for Canada, .jp for Japan and .de for Germany. The ccTLDs are sometimes confused with gTLDs. The ccTLDs normally have more restrictive registration requirements, including nationality requirements, whereas gTLDs tend to have open registration for everyone.
 
Domain Name System (DNS) - Domain Name System: Hierarchical system for converting domain names into numeric IP addresses in order to locate resources on the Internet.
 
Domain - Domain Name - Domain Name: Addressing system designed to identify and locate computers on the Internet. Domain names offer an easy-to-remember, text-based system for Internet addressing that can be converted by DNS into numeric addressing (IP Address) used by the network. A domain name is hierarchical and sometimes carries information that defines how the domain name is being used. A domain name must be unique. For example, there can only be one .COM for a specific second-level name. For instance, there is only one CDmon.com.
 
ESNIC: Registry body for .es domains. It is part of the public business entity Red.es. It provides the interface so that accredited registrars such as cdmon.com can register, transfer, renew and modify .es domains. It also maintains the DNS service that allows a domain to point to a website via the assigned name servers and is responsible for promoting the Spanish extension.
 
Extensible Markup Language (XML): Markup language for documents that contain structured data. Structured data contains both content (characters, photos, etc.) and indications of what that content is (for example, content in the header section has a different meaning than in the footer). The whole document maintains a structure. A markup language is used to identify structures in the document. The XML specification defines a standard for using tags in documents.
 
Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP): Client-server application layer to manage objects stored in a shared central repository. Specified in XML, the protocol defines generic operations and a scalable infrastructure that interacts with operations on the objects.
 
Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD): Domain name TLD that is open to registration worldwide, unlike ccTLDs, which are usually restricted to particular regions or countries. The .com, .net, .org and .cat domains are examples of gTLDs.
 
Host: A computer that maintains the software and information (zone files) required to link domain names to IP addresses. Also known as Domain Name Server.
 
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA): The authority originally responsible for the supervision and allocation of IP addressing. The coordination of assignment parameters comes from Internet standards, the supervision of DNS, including TLD delegations, and the supervision of the root name servers. Under ICANN, IANA continues to distribute addresses to the regional registries, coordinating with the IETF and others to supervise and establish parameters for DNS operations.
 
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN): The non-profit organization that manages and coordinates the Domain Name System (DNS). It focuses on preserving the stability of the Internet, promoting competition and developing policies and rules.
 
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF): A large international community of network designers, operators, vendors and researchers focused on the evolution of the Internet. This activity is open to anyone interested.
 
Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC): InterNIC was the name given to a project started in 1993 under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation (NSF), allowing Network Solutions, Inc. to provide domain registration services for .com, .net, .org and .edu. The name InterNIC is no longer used by Network Solutions. InterNIC is currently a website of ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
 
Internet Protocol (IP): Internet communications protocol. IP allows large, geographically diverse networks to communicate with each other quickly and economically.
 
IP Address: Numeric address that defines a location on the Internet. Computers on the Internet use IP addressing to route data traffic and establish connections with each other.
 
Name Service: Maintains the hardware, software and data required to enable linking between domain names and IP addresses. Many ISPs maintain name servers and provide name service to their customers when they register a domain name.
 
Nic_Handle or Nic Handle: Identifier assigned to the contacts of .es domains. They are created by ESNIC when you have registered a .es domain. These contacts include information such as: first and last name, address, phone number, email account, etc. The identifier of each contact is of the form XXXX-ESNIC-F4. You can use the same Nic_Handle contact for all contacts of the domain (administrative, technical, etc.) and also for the contacts of other .es domains you have already registered or will register in the future. There are several advantages to using the same contact:
  1. it will not be necessary to fill in a contact form, as the information stored in the nic_handle you enter will be retrieved.
  2. you will be able to manage various options for all domains that use the same nic_handle from the nic.es panel (for example: approve transfers of .es domains).

Intellectual Property: Represents the ownership of ideas in a tangible or virtual form. An example is registered trademarks.
 
Registrar: Natural person or entity that, through a contract with ICANN, has a sales channel for the purchase of domain names. An example of a Registrar is cdmon.com.
 
Accredited Registrar: Registrar that has been certified as meeting the requirements to act as the registrar of a specific TLD. This term is used when referring to the certificates granted by ICANN. An example of an Accredited Registrar is cdmon.com.
 
Authorized Registrar: Registrar that has been authorized to proceed to register domains of a specific registry. Cdmon is an Accredited Registrar for several extensions, such as .com, .net and .es, among others.
 
Registrant - Registrant or Holder: Natural person or organization that registers a specific domain name. The registrant has the right to use the domain name for a specific period of time, as long as they comply with the conditions of the registrar and pay the fees. The registrant is the legal representative of the domain name.
 
Registry WHOIS: WHOIS service available in some registries for the domain names over which they have authority.
 
Registry: Natural person or entity that provides domain registration services under a contract with ICANN. The services offered by the registry include everything from maintaining a customer database to maintaining the root servers for the DNS. An example of a Registry is Verisign, which provides the registration service for .com and .net domains.
 
Request for Comment (RFC): Documents generated by the IETF that describe standards and compatibilities.
 
Reseller - Reseller: Some accredited registrars have resellers. The registrars provide the resellers with the necessary tools, such as management and sales systems, for registering domains.
 
Resolve - Resolver: Procedure by which the domain name is matched with its IP address. Name resolution is carried out through a combination of hardware and software.
 
Root Server - Root Servers: A server that has the software and data necessary to locate the DNS servers that contain the authoritative data for the TLDs. The root servers are distributed around the world, for example in the United States, Canada and Japan.
 
Second-Level Domain (SLD): Represents the second level in the DNS hierarchy. For example, for the domain example.com, “example” represents the second level of the domain name.
 
Secure Socket Layer (SSL): A security protocol that provides secure communications on the Internet. The protocol enables client/server applications to communicate over a channel designed to prevent attacks.
 
Thick Registry: Registry in which all information associated with the domains, both technical and the domain contacts, is stored and maintained by the Registry. An example would be Fundació Puntcat and the .cat domains.
 
Thin Registry: Registry in which only the technical information of the domain is maintained, while the domain contacts are managed by the Registrar. An example would be Verisign and .com.
 
TLD Zone: A file that contains the data needed to describe a portion of the domain name space for a given TLD. Zone files contain the information needed to link names to IP addresses.
 
Top-Level Domain (TLD): Name at the top of the DNS name hierarchy. The TLD in the domain name represents the part on the right of the name after the dot. For example, for example.com, .com would be the TLD. It is also known as the domain extension.
 
Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP): All registrars of domain TLDs are subject to this policy by ICANN. Under this policy, most trademark and domain name registration disputes must be resolved by agreement, court order or arbitration before a registrar can cancel, suspend or transfer a domain name.
 
Uniform Resource Locator (URL): The address that identifies each resource on the Internet. More formally, a URL is a network extension of a standard for filenames that may exist on a local or remote machine and can be shared using various methods. An example of a URL is https://www.cdmon.com/es/ .
 
Web-based WHOIS: WHOIS data display service accessible via the web. You can see an example in the cdmon.com WHOIS search tool.
 
WHOIS Server - WHOIS Server: The application that provides access to the WHOIS service.
 
WHOIS: A database maintained by the registries and registrars that contains information about domain name registrations for TLDs and ccTLDs.
 
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) - World Intellectual Property Organization: Organization responsible for promoting intellectual property protection worldwide.
 
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): An international consortium founded in October 1994 to develop common protocols that promote the evolution of the World Wide Web and ensure its interoperability. Among many other services, W3C provides an information base about the World Wide Web for developers, users, implementers and various example applications.
 
Zone Files - Zone Files: A file that contains the data required to describe part of the domain name space. Zone files contain the information needed to link names to IP addresses.
 

For more information, you can contact us.

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