A.   Similar to how your house address indicates where you live in the world, a domain name indicates where your web site's location is on the Internet. Generally people want domain names that are easy to remember so that others can locate their web site very easily.

A domain name is an alias for a particular numeric Internet Protocol (IP) address. (An IP address is a string of four numbers ranging from 0-255 separated by periods called dots. A typical IP address could look something like: 192.134.12.212.) Every computer connected to the Internet has at least one IP address that uniquely identifies it from all other computers on the Internet. Because numeric IP addresses are relatively difficult for people to remember, the domain name system (DNS) was created to allow people to associate meaningful and easy-to-remember aliases with actual IP addresses. Since every IP address is unique, every domain name must also be unique. Domain names correspond to numeric IP addresses and the DNS matches domain names to IP addresses so that users of the Internet only have to remember domain names, not numbers.