WHAT IS the DOMAIN

The term domain name has multiple related meanings:

• A name that identifies a computer or computers on the internet. These names appear as a component of a Web site's URL, e.g. wikipedia.org. This type of domain name is also called a hostname.
• The product that domain name registrars provide to their customers. These names are often called registered domain names.
• Names used for other purposes in the Domain Name System (DNS), for example the special name which follows the @ sign in an email address, or the Top-level domain names like .com, or the names used by the Session Initiation Protocol (VoIP), or DomainKeys.
• They are sometimes colloquially (and incorrectly) referred to by marketers as "web addresses".

This article will primarily discuss registered domain names. See the Domain Name System article for technical discussions about general domain names and the hostname article for further information about the most common type of domain name.

if you want to see all article here is the source
source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name

WHAT IS the DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM

On the Internet, the Domain Name System (DNS) associates various sorts of information with so-called domain names; most importantly, it serves as the "phone book" for the Internet by translating human-readable computer hostnames, e.g. en.wikipedia.org, into the IP addresses, e.g. 66.230.200.100, that networking equipment needs for delivering information. It also stores other information such as the list of mail exchange servers that accept email for a given domain. In providing a worldwide keyword-based redirection service, the Domain Name System is an essential component of contemporary Internet use.

Uses

The most basic use of DNS is to translate hostnames to IP addresses. It is in very simple terms like a phone book. For example, if you want to know the internet address of en.wikipedia.org, the Domain Name System can be used to tell you it is 145.97.39.155. DNS also has other important uses.

Preeminently, DNS makes it possible to assign Internet destinations to the human organization or concern they represent, independently of the physical routing hierarchy represented by the numerical IP address. Because of this, hyperlinks and Internet contact information can remain the same, whatever the current IP routing arrangements may be, and can take a human-readable form (such as "wikipedia.org") which is rather easier to remember than an IP address (such as 66.230.200.100). People take advantage of this when they recite meaningful URLs and e-mail addresses without caring how the machine will actually locate them.

The Domain Name System (DNS) distributes the responsibility for assigning domain names and mapping them to IP networks by allowing an authoritative server for each domain to keep track of its own changes, avoiding the need for a central registrar to be continually consulted and updated.

if you want to see all article here is the source
source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_system

Link to a forum : DNS Hosting > Domain Registration

First comment from this forum :

Jul 6 2005

"It's been months since this message first appeared on EV1's Manage Your Domain page:

Our apologies... EV1Servers' domain registration system is temporarily offline.

What's going on?"

see this forum at : http://forums.theplanet.com/index.php?s=5fa1412f0441be2058026bfb9089cda0&showtopic=56747

Link to forums about cheap domains

Forums :

• Link to a forum : Cheapest Domain Name Registration
• Link to a forum : cheapest domain prices available
• Link to a forum : Cheap Domain Name
• Link to a forum : cheap domain name?
• Link to a forum : Cheapest .com Registrar
• Link to a forum : Where Can I Get A Free Domain Name???
• Link to a forum : Looking cheap hosting company
• Link to a forum : cheap domains
• Link to a forum : Cheapest Domain Name Accepting Paypal?

Link to a forum : Who to go to for web hosting

First comment from this forum :

"I've seen a few threads and posts in this forum where people have asked where to get hosting from, so I thought I'd make this sticky. If you have any recommendations or anti-recommendations as to who to go to (or not go to as the case may be) then this is the place to post about it.

I'll be heavily moderating this thread to make sure it stays on topic, if you want to talk to someone about something to get more details then do it via a PM, and maybe that person could come back and make an amendment to their post if neccessary. Remember, edit your already existing post, don't make a new one.

If I see anyone who's only post is in this thread then I will consider it advertising and delete it, if I see anyone who is obviously pimping their own hosting company then I will delete that.

Make sure that in your post you include details about the host you're talking about, 99.99% uptime and 6 TeraBytes of space for £1.99 per year doesn't count. While the hosting package and price is obviously worth mentioning it's not the be all and end all. Be sure to back up why you think they're good or bad with a short description of why you think that. I don't want to see recommendations for hosts that you're going to try out either, if you personally haven't used them then as a recommendation it doesn't carry much weight.

I'll start the ball rolling with an anti-recomendation, my current host is www.web-hosting.uk.com and they are ... not a good host. Quite often any pages that use ASP (which is pretty much my entire site) will simply stop working and no content will be sent to the browser. All normal .html pages will continue to be sent fine, I'm not sure if PHP pages still work during these "outages" as I've never had any to test. However, they are a pretty cheap UK based host and use the easy to get around helm CMS for their admin panel, so if you're just starting out and don't use a server-side language, they might be worth considering."

see this forum at : http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?s=00d161e6577327d883267418a9b4a412&t=66702