From a domain name to a website

People often think of a domain name and a website as being the same thing, but there are actually several steps involved in relating a domain name that you can own to the web server that hosts a website. In this article I give a brief (and greatly simplified) description of how that actually works.

The process of connecting a domain name to a web server starts with the domain name registration, the piece of legal evidence purchased from a registrar that shows who owns the domain name (except see the side panel, “Hiding your name?”). In addition to the domain name itself, the registration record contains the owner’s name, address and other contact information. The registration also contains information that identifies the two or more domain name service (DNS) servers for the domain name.

The DNS servers are different from the web server. The block diagram below shows the relationship among the domain name registration, the domain name DNS servers and the web server.

The relationship between a domain name record, a domain name DNS server, and a web server

As illustrated, the domain name registration doesn’t point directly to the web server, but instead points to a DNS server. The DNS server tells other computers on the network where to find the web server.

For example, in the case of www.danielnorton.com, the domain name registration shows that I own danielnorton.com and that two of its DNS servers (there are always at least two) are ns1.easydns.com and ns2.easydns.com. A computer wanting to connect to my web server can use either DNS server, as they are both required to provide identical information. Right now, the DNS servers report that my web server is on the internet at IP address 72.14.176.99. Finally, to display the contents of my website, a computer makes a connection to the server at 72.14.176.99 (my web server) and it reads the contents of my website and displays it in a web browser (e.g. Firefox).

You can quickly find out the name servers assigned to any domain name through a “whois” lookup, which can be done from a whois program on your personal computer or from a variety of websites (e.g. www.domaintools.com).

As I own the domain name “danielnorton.com,” I control what information is in its domain name registration record. If my registrar were Go Daddy, for example, I could log on to my account at the Go Daddy website and make any change I want to that registration record, including changing that part that says which DNS servers know where my web server is.

The DNS servers for a domain name could be provided by any number of companies, but they are usually provided by the domain name registrar (e.g. Go Daddy or eNom) or by the company that controls the website’s web server. If it were provided by eNom, for example, I could go to the eNom website and make adjustments to the DNS records and point www.danielnorton.com to a different server.

Summing up, a domain name is not the website or the web server, but the first step in the sequence from the domain name registration. The domain name registration points to the DNS server, and the DNS server points to the web server. The web server then does the work of delivering a web page, such as this one, to your web browser.