Getting Your Own Domain Name

Domain Names -
Getting Your Own!

MyVeryOwn.Com

More and more home users, home based businesses and small business users are coming to the Internet as more than just casual observers. They may have full-time dedicated connections to the Internet from their Cable-TV providers or a DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) line as I do from their telephone company or an independent ISP/CLEC (Internet Service Provider/Competitive Local Exchange Carrier), or even ISDN or IDSL (the lower cost DSL version of ISDN). In some areas, high-speed Internet access is now available by wireless services who deliver your connection over extremely high frequency radio transmission much like satellite television but two-way with data flowing to and from your computer or home network using line-of-sight radio towers rather than satellites. Let us not forget the tens of thousands who have a second telephone line dedicated to dial-up Internet access. We may be years away from the Internet being truly ubiquitous with all of us carrying around a pocket-sized device that offers high speed high resolution color screen graphical wireless access from anywhere in the world but the Internet has undoubtedly become a useful tool in many peoples' lives.

In E-commerce, in the business world, personalization refers to tailoring content to the buyer's interests in order to encourage spending, but more and more people are wanting a different 'personal' experience on the Internet. They want their individual presence known and shown to the world. They no longer want to be someone@someISP.com they want to be me@mydomain.com and have websites that carry their unique domain name too.

Only a few years ago domain names were the province of business. Today more and more people are obtaining domains for their own use. Here I'll give the details of what that involves.

You've probably already seen many web ads for domain name registrars and may have seen them on magazines and even on television commercials. Some domain registrars are offering lower priced registrations of domain names at half the price of what Network Solutions Inc. who until recently was the sole registrar for many top level domains. Unfortunately what I am also seeing is people registering domains without knowing what the next steps are. And to get a useful functional domain name there is more involved than just registering the name.

DNS

Domain names by themselves are not worth a great deal. For them to function as Internet addresses they need to be serviced by a domain service provider. The DNS provider is the one whose service translates that human readable domain name into the numerical equivalent that networks and computers understand. That is not a service that comes with registering a new domain, you must obtain it separately. All domain registrations require you to give the addresses of two functioning name servers that will service your domain. That is a required part of the process. Most domain registrars therefore have come to offer free domain parking for your domain name, but this may not be what you think. With Domain Parking the registrar simply adds your new domain to his name servers but instead of pointing to your machine, your parked domain points to an IP owned by the registrar to which all parked domains point. Parking merely satisfies the registration requirement for two name servers. It does not provide you with functioning DNS. In other words, with domain parking you have a domain name that effectively points to nowhere and can not be used for anything. It is merely parked or 'on hold'.

If you have a dedicated connection to the Internet from a DSL, cable or other provider and want a domain name to point directly to your machine, in addition to registering the domain name you will need to make arrangements to obtain DNS service to have your domain name resolve to your machine's IP. If you have a static IP, one that does not change, often the simplest way of doing this is to ask your ISP if they provide this service. Many do. There is often a fee associated with this service. Fees can range from around $50 (US) per year and up. Once you have DNS for machine your DNS provider will generally allow you to have additional subdomain names for your machine at no extra cost. For example, if you registered mydomain.org then you might also want www.mydomain.org to point to your machine too. Your DNS provider can do that for you.

If your connection to the Internet is not one with a static IP but rather a dynamically issued IP that changes each time you dial-in to your ISP or changes after some number of hours or days with a cable or DSL dedicated connection, contrary to popular belief, you are not out of luck. EasyDNS, a Canadian company, provides domain name services to individuals and businesses with either static or dynamically issued IPs. For a small yearly fee EasyDNS offers full DNS services including Primary and Secondary DNS, email and stealth URL forwarding, and dynamic IP support. The way this works, when you register for EasyDNS DNS services you can setup your static IP based domain with an easy to use web-based domain management system, or if you have a dynamically issued IP you run a small program that sits in your system tray (it can also run as a service on NT/W2K) which monitors your machine's IP. When you logon to the network or whenever your IP changes, the program sends your new IP to the company's name servers which update their name tables with your new IP. This service currently costs $24.95, 49.95 with mail handling and web forwarding, (US) year and provides an elegant solution to the problem of dynamic IPs. Please visit their web, EasyDNS, site for additional information. (After registering with EasyDNS visit their Support area to download Dynamic DNS clients for Linux/Unix and Windows 95/98 and Windows 2000.)

If you haven't yet registered a domain, EasyDNS will also register your new domain for $25/yr.

DOMAIN & FRAME FORWARDING

Alternatively, if you don't want your domain name to point to your own machine but want it to point to your current personal or business web page you can use a service called domain forwarding in which the DNS provider simply redirects the requesting web browser to your web site's URL. With straight domain forwarding the actual URL of your web site will be shown in the browser's address bar after the redirection takes place. With another form of forwarding known as Frame Forwarding (EasyDNS calls this Stealth Forwarding) the DNS provider redirects the requested domain name to your existing URL but this time does it within an effectively invisible frame so that your domain continues to display in the browser's address bar even after the redirection. Both of these services may be available at a lower cost then full regular DNS service though frame forwarding is often a bit higher priced than simple domain forwarding. Some domain registrars offer this service directly.

EMAIL & YOUR DOMAIN

There's one more issue we need to cover: Email. If you want to use your new domain name as your email address you have to either run your own SMTP and POP or IMAP servers on your machine (not recommended for anyone but the technically sophisticated with dedicated Internet connections) or you need to make arrangements with your DNS provider for mail handling services. The most common way of handling this is to arrange for your DNS provider to forward all email for your domain to your existing POP email account with your ISP. Using this method any email sent to your domain will be received by the DNS provider and then automatically forwarded to youraccount@yourISP.com. Your provider may offer unlimited email aliases where you can receive email sent to an unlimited number of usernames at your domain (the part before the @ in an email address) or a limited number of fixed aliases that you select in advance. Shop around for the service you want. The downside of this method is that all your email will be delivered to one account. It'll be up to you and your family or colleagues to sort out whose mail belong to whom. You can arrange for multiple POP accounts from your DNS provider but expect to pay a significantly higher fee.

In conclusion, whether you are running a web server or a game server or just want a unique identity on the Internet domain names are a low cost possibility for most small business and individual users. There are a few pitfalls but I hope I've given you a start at understanding what's involved.