Do-It-Yourself Ecommerce

The basic structure of the Internet is similar to the highway system. Interstate highways are equivalent to Internet backbones which are high capacity fiber-optic cables. There are a small number of Network Access Points along the backbones which feed Regional Access Points which feed Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) which feed clients, people like you, via a web browser.

The two variations are intranets and extranets. Intranets are small scale internets contained within a single entity like a university or corporation. An extranet is, for example, a corporation’s intranet that connects to its suppliers and/or distributors but not the general public. It’s sometimes referred to as a WAN, or Wide Area Net.

Along the highway system are the businesses and libraries that are stored on computer servers. A client such as yourself accesses the server to retrieve or send information. It’s the same as driving from your house to a store to buy something or to the library to find some information.

How do you know where to go? Carrying our analogy a little further, just as every home and business has an address, every place on the Internet has an address called an IP (Internet Protocol) address. The IP address is a set of four numbers, each from 0 – 255 and separated by dots (i.e. 192.168.1.100).

NOTE: The internet is running out of IP addresses as defined above. A Standards Committee is coming up with a new standard called IPv6 that will allow for trillions of addresses.

Since you can’t be expected to remember everyone’s number, there are Registrars who convert the IP addresses into Domain Names, or letters and numbers, such as mydomain or my-1st-website. It’s like a cell phone where you select “Mom” and it automatically dials her number.

Domain names are also divided up into domain types like .com, .net, .org, .gov, etc. Countries also have their identities like Germany (.de) and England (.uk). To get technical the .com part is the Top Level Domain (TLD) and the mydomain left of the dot is the Second Level Domain (SLD).

.Com represents companies or for profit organizations, it is also the most common extension for domain names. Most personal web sites also use this extension

.Net generally represents Internet Service Providers and other organizations

.Org represents non-profit organizations or groups

.Info stands for information and is generally for information type sites but not limited to that type

.Biz domains are used for businesses’ sites

.US stands for United States and can be used for any type of site

.WS means ‘website’ and can be used for many different types of websites

Though these are general guidelines, you may use any of these extensions when registering a domain name. If you want to make sure no one else can benefit from your domain name, it’s a good idea to register all variations of your domain name.

When you type a name into your browser, it goes to the Domain Name System database and finds the proper IP address. Some browsers, like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, have what’s called a Host File which stores the IP addresses that you have gone to before so you don’t have to go to the DNS database every time you log on to the Internet and go to a specific site.