What a domain is, who runs the system, and what happens between typing an address and seeing a page.
Read a domain right to left. shop.example.co.uk is a subdomain of a domain, under a second-level extension, under a country extension. The part you buy is the label immediately left of the extension — everything to the left of that is yours to invent, free, forever.
Every extension belongs to a category, and the category decides the rules you are subject to — who may register, whether privacy is allowed, and who arbitrates a dispute.
Three parties, always. The registry operates the extension and holds the master database. The registrar — us — is accredited to sell and manage names in it. The registrant is you. ICANN accredits registrars for generic extensions; country extensions answer to their own national authority.
Your browser asks a resolver. The resolver asks a root server which machines run the extension, asks those which machines are authoritative for your domain, and asks those for the record. Four questions, usually under 50 milliseconds, cached at every step.
After expiry comes a renewal grace period, then redemption — where recovery costs several times a renewal — then pending delete, and only then does the name return to the market. Roughly ninety days from expiry to availability.
Domains are older than the web. The naming system replaced a single hand-maintained text file that every machine on the network downloaded.
| gTLD | Generic | Open to anyone, anywhere. Governed by ICANN contract. | com, net, org |
| ccTLD | Country code | Two letters, tied to a territory. Each sets its own rules — some require local presence, some do not care. | nl, de, ai |
| sTLD | Sponsored | Restricted to a defined community, with eligibility checks. | edu, gov, museum |
| newGTLD | New generic | Delegated since 2013. Anything from a category to a brand. | dev, app, cloud |
symbolics.com becomes the first registered .com.nl is delegated — the first ccTLD outside the United States.ai is delegated to Anguilla.dev launches HTTPS-only, preloaded into every browser