When you order telephone service for your home or business, the particular carrier that you use assigns a specific ¨C and unique ¨C phone number to you. The same is true for computers. The series of numbers, which are actually much longer than a standard telephone number, is unique to your particular PC. The numbers that are assigned to your computer are referred to as the IP Address (short for Internet Protocol Address). Since the memorization of these can become a bit taxing, the DNS allows those numbers to be converted into letters, or domain names, such as www.miriamwebster.com. If you can imagine how hard it would be to remember specific numbers for every site that you wanted to visit rather than simply recalling the domain name, then you'll see why this is such a helpful technological tool.

The owners of sites that are created on the internet will then need to complete the process of domain name registration. This allows the owner of the site to insert their domain name into a directory along with others who have registered their own domain names. Depending upon the particular type of business that you're registering, you might use the suffixes of .org, .net, .name, .info, .coop, .museum or some other commonly used tag at the end of such a name.

Companies who actually accept the registration of a domain name are referred to as Registrars, and a list of these is available through a Registrar Directory which can be found online. Part of the registration process includes providing the Registrar with contact information, as well as any technical information that may be pertinent to your registration. In order to make your site ¨C or e-mail address ¨C available to others on the internet, your domain name must be received and approved by one of these Registrars. Of course, just as in the case of anything other agreement, you'll need to accept the terms of whatever contract the Registrar provides if you hope to go "live".

Although most sensitive information is never shared with others on the internet, Registrars are required to provide the names of those who own particular domain names within a specific site on the internet, meaning that the information will be accessible to the public. This is done so that there will be no outstanding problems in a variety of legal areas ¨C such as trademarking and consumer protection ¨C as well as in the case of technical problems needing to be addressed regarding a certain site.

The name that's attached to the domain name at the time of registration is the person who's responsible for maintaining it, addressing technical issues and fielding any other problems, such as consumer complaints, etc. In some cases, people choose to register their domain to a third party. This is perfectly legal, on the condition that the person of the third party agrees to take responsibility for the site, as well as any problems or repercussions that come about as a result of the site's operation.

Typically, a domain name registration contract expires at the end of a year, with the option for renewal on an annual basis. This, of course, will depend upon the specifics of each Registrar, and the maximum number of years that a domain name may be registered for is ten. If you should have the need to change Registrars at some point after your domain name has been registered, you'll need to do so within 60 days, or some other specific timeframe that's been required by the Registrar, as noted on the contract.

It's very important to choose an accredited Registrar. Otherwise, you're not going to have a legitimate site name, and that can cause serious problems. Any Registrar who is not accredited by ICANN ¨C the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ¨C isn't allowed to register names such as those mentioned in the earlier portion of this article. In some cases, a Registrar may make use of a reseller, but the actual contract is between those who have submitted for domain name registration and the Registrar, rather than the reseller.