Glossary

Definition

Address Record, maps an IP address to a domain name. For example the A record for ausregistry.com.au is 203.17.72.51.

A Registrar is a retailer of domain names who has met all policy and technical requirements to register domain names on behalf of the public.

The Administrative contact is an individual, role or organisation authorised to interact with the Registry or Registrar on behalf of the domain name holder. The Administrative contact should be able to answer non-technical questions about the domain name's registration.

In all cases, the Administrative contact is viewed as the authoritative point of contact for the domain name, second only to the Registrant. The Administrative contact is a required contact within a valid domain registration.

AfriNIC is a non-government, not-for-profit, membership based organization, based in Mauritius to serve the African Internet Community. AfriNIC is the Regional Registry for Internet Number Resources for Africa.
http://www.afrinic.net

APNIC is one of five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) currently operating in the world. It provides allocation and registration services which support the operation of the Internet globally.

APNIC is a not-for-profit, membership-based organisation whose members include Internet Service Providers, National Internet Registries, and similar organisations. APNIC represents the Asia Pacific region, comprising 56 economies.
http://www.apnic.net

ARIN is a Regional Internet Registry (RIR) incorporated in the Commonwealth of Virginia, USA. ARIN provides services related to the technical coordination and management of Internet number resources in regions which includes Canada, the United States, and several islands in the Caribbean Sea and North Atlantic Ocean.
http://www.arin.net

The Billing contact is the individual, role, or organisation designated to receive the invoice for domain name registration and re-registration fee

Berkeley Internet Name Daemon. The most widely used DNS software on the Internet today.

See Country Code Top Level Domain.

Contacts are individuals or entities associated with domain name records. Typically, third parties with specific inquiries or concerns will use contact records to determine who should act upon specific issues related to a domain name record.

There are typically four contact types associated with a domain name record, the Registrant contact, Administrative contact, the Billing contact and the Technical contact.

ccTLDs represent the TLDs used by countries in the world, they account for about 250 of the 260 TLDs. Some examples of ccTLDs are '.ae' for the United Arab Emirates, and '.au' for Australia. A list of ccTLDs can be found at http://www.iana.org/root-whois/index.php.

Each named Internet host belongs to a domain, which itself may be a sub-domain of a domain higher in the naming hierarchy of DNS. There is no requirement for hosts within a given domain to belong to the same physical network – domains are primarily a conceptual boundary, and in the majority of cases, they imply an administrative boundary.

An addressing construct used for identifying and locating computers on the Internet. Domain names provide a system of easy-to-remember Internet addresses, which can be translated by the DNS into the numeric addresses (IP numbers) used by the network.

A domain name is hierarchical and often conveys information about the type of entity using the domain name. A domain name is simply a label that represents a domain, which is a subset of the total domain name space. Domain names at the same level of the hierarchy must be unique. Thus, for example, there can be only one .com at the top-level of the hierarchy, and only one ausregistry.com at the next level of the hierarchy.

The DNS is the hierarchical system by which easy-to-remember, human-friendly names like "yahoo.com" are associated with Internet locations.

EPP (Extensible Provisioning Protocol)
EPP v1.0 is the latest protocol utilised by Internet Registries to enable multiple Registrars to administer domain name information.

Further information technical information regarding EPP may be found under here: http://www.rfc-editor.org

RFC documents relating to EPP are:
RFC 3730, RFC 3731, RFC 3732, RFC 3733, RFC 3734, RFC 3735

A top level domain name that is open to Registrants around the world in contrast to country code top level domains that are often restricted to Registrants living in a particular country or region. Domains that end in .com, .net and .org are all generic top level domains.

A glue record is an ‘A’ record that is created as part of a delegation. If a zone is delegated to a nameserver whose hostname is a descendant of that particular zone, then a glue record for that hostname must be included in the delegation.

At the base level, a host is one computer that serves a client with a service or sorts. In the DNS, one definition of a host is a computer that has both the software and the data (zone files) needed to resolve domain names to IP numbers. These hosts can also be called a nameserver. Hosts can also referred to in computers offering a particular service such as a mail server or FTP (file transfer protocol) server.

Short for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web. HTTP defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands.

IANA is an organisation that manages global IP address allocation and DNS root zone management

The IAB is chartered both as a committee of the IETF and as an advisory body of the Internet Society (ISOC). Its responsibilities include architectural oversight of IETF activities, Internet standards process oversight and appeal, and the appointment of the RFC editor. The IAB is also responsible for the management of the IETF protocol parameter registries.

The non-profit organization that officially coordinates the technical management of the Internet's domain name system. It was founded to assume responsibility for items such as IP address space assignment, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root server system management.
http://www.icann.org

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet.

The communications protocol underlying the Internet. IP allows large, geographically-diverse networks of computers to communicate with each other quickly and economically over a variety of physical links.

An Internet Protocol address is the numerical address by which a location in the Internet is identified. Computers on the Internet use IP addresses to route traffic and establish connections among themselves; people generally use the human-friendly names made possible by the DNS.

Currently there are two types of IP addresses in active use: IP version 4 (IPv4) and IP version 6 (IPv6). IPv4 was initially deployed on 1 January 1983 and is still the most commonly used version.

IPv4 addresses are 32-bit numbers often expressed as 4 octets in "dotted decimal" notation (for example, 192.0.32.67).

Deployment of the IPv6 protocol began in 1999. IPv6 addresses are 128-bit numbers and are conventionally expressed using hexadecimal strings (for example, 1080:0:0:0:8:800:200C:417A).

LACNIC is the organization that administrates IP addresses space, Autonomous System Numbers (ASN), reverse resolution and other resources of the Latin American and Caribbean region (LAC), on behalf of the Internet community.

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, defined in RFCs 1777 and 1778, it is a method of accessing information stored in directories

Providing individuals or organisations with domain name-to-IP number resolution by maintaining and making available the hardware, software, and data needed to perform this function. Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) operate nameservers and provide their customers with a name service when they register a domain name. Most individuals are not in a position to operate a nameserver on their own and will need to make arrangements for a name service with an ISP or some other person or organisation.

A machine that resolves Internet domain names into IP addresses, and vice-versa.

Operational Test and Evaluation - A process in which accredited Registrars develop client systems and software to register and manage domain names and nameservers prior to live operation.

The individual or organisation that registers a specific domain name. This individual or organisation holds the right to use that specific domain name for a specified period of time, provided certain conditions are met and the registration fees are paid. This person or organisation is the "legal entity" bound by the terms of the relevant service agreement with the Registry operator for the TLD in question.

A person or entity that, via a contract with Registrants and a Registry provides front-end registration services to Registrants. These services form the public interface to Registry services.

The act of registering a domain name in the Registry.

Has the exclusive responsibly for maintenance of a centralised Registry for its particular TLD. There are two Registry models currently in use � thick and thin. The .ae namespace runs on the thick Registry model - once a domain is registered, all information is stored in the Registry, which has the exclusive responsibly for storing the full information about each domain.

The thin Registry model is where the Registry contains a minimal amount of data (dates, nameserver and Registrar) about the domain name and refers to the sponsoring Registrar who holds all the contact information. The .com and .net namespaces use the thin Registry model.

A protocol for the registration and management of second level domain names and associated nameservers in both TLDs and country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs).

WhoIs services (see WhoIs) made available by specific Registries for the Domain Names that they are authoritative for.

Company or organisation vetted with the responsibility of operating the ccTLD for the benefit of all stakeholders.

The term used to describe the process by which domain names are matched with corresponding IP numbers. Resolution is accomplished by a combination of computers and software, referred to as nameservers that use the data in the DNS to determine which IP numbers correspond to a particular domain name.

The name of the process for creating a standard on the Internet. New standards are proposed and published on the Internet as an RFC. The proposal is reviewed by the IETF and eventually a new standard is established if accepted.

The reference number/name for the standard retains the acronym RFC, e.g. the official standard for e-mail message formats is RFC 822.

http://www.rfc-editor.org is the repository for all RFC documents

The RIPE NCC is one of five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) providing Internet resource allocations, registration services and co-ordination activities that support the operation of the Internet globally. RIPE services Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia regions.
http://www.ripe.net

Registry Object Identifier. The Registry produces ROIDs every time a Registry object is created. Each ROID is unique and is similar to a serial number.

A machine that has the software and data needed to locate nameservers that contain authoritative data for the top-level domains (e.g., root servers know which nameservers contain authoritative data for com, net, fr, uk etc.). The root servers are, in fact, nameservers and contain authoritative data for the very top of the DNS hierarchy. Currently, technical specifications limit the number of root servers to 13. These machines are currently located around the globe, in the U.S., the UK, Sweden, and Japan.

See Registry Registrar Protocol.

The alphanumeric string before the dot and the TLD. The .aeDA administers all domains within the .com, .net, .org, .name, .edu, gov, .mil and .fz 2LD's that exist within the .ae TLD. 2LD's are also called domain types within the Registry system.

The identity of the Registrar currently responsible for the domain name in the Registry database.

A domain name registration system in which Registry services are shared among multiple independent Registrars. The Registry SRS enables these Registrars to connect to the central .ae Internet Registry.

SSL is an acronym for "Secure Socket Layer", a security protocol that provides communications privacy over the Internet. The protocol allows client/server applications to communicate in a way that is designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, or message forgery.

The Technical contact is the individual, role or organisation who is responsible for the technical operations of the delegated zone. This contact likely maintains the domain nameserver(s) for the domain.

The Technical contact should be able to answer technical questions about the domain name, the delegated zone and work with technically oriented people in other zones to solve technical problems that affect the domain name and/or zone.

The alphabetic string before the dot and the 2LD. Between 2 and 63 characters long, this is the 'yahoo' in yahoo.co.ae.

See Top-Level Domain.

A file that contains data describing a portion of the Domain Name space for a specific top-level domain. Zone files contain the information needed to resolve domain names to IP numbers. Zone files contain domain names, their associated nameserver names and the IP addresses for those nameservers.

A superset of gTLDs and ccTLDs. Every Domain Name must end with a TLD. UAE domains all have the TLD, which is a ccTLD, this is the .ae Domain.

TLDs are the names at the top of the DNS naming hierarchy. They appear in domain names as the string of letters following the last (rightmost) "dot", such as �net' in �www.example.net'. The administrator for a TLD controls what second-level names are recognized in that TLD. The administrators of the "root domain" or "root zone" control what TLDs are recognized by the DNS. Commonly used TLDs include .com, .net, .edu, .jp, .de, etc.

TCP is one of the main protocols in TCP/IP networks. Whereas the IP protocol deals only with packets, TCP enables two hosts to establish a connection and exchange streams of data. TCP guarantees delivery of data and also guarantees that packets will be delivered in the same order in which they were sent.

A name, symbol, or other device identifying a product, officially registered and legally restricted to the use of the owner or manufacturer.

A World Wide Web interface to WhoIs services.

The application server providing the WhoIs service.

Another source record type within the DNS system.

The most common kind of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) which is a webpage address such as: http://www.yahoo.co.ae.

A TCP transaction based query/response server that provides a net-wide directory service to network users. This can be used to determine if domain names are registered and by whom.

More complex queries can result in multiple results showing lists of domains registered to specific entities or residing on specified host machines.

In DNS, a contiguous portion of a domain consisting of names or delegations. Formally, a domain name belongs to exactly one (authoritative) zone.