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    Who Owns The "." in .com

    Discussion in 'Networking and Wireless' started by Alienwarez, Mar 13, 2008.

  1. Alienwarez

    Alienwarez Notebook Evangelist

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    I am not sure i'm asking this in the correct forum, but does anyone know the answer to this. Who owns the "." dot?
     
    Alienwarez, Mar 13, 2008
    #1
  2. Lithus

    Lithus NBR Janitor

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    Verisign holds the registry for ".com". Not sure what you mean by "owning" the dot.
     
    Lithus, Mar 13, 2008
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  3. Alienwarez

    Alienwarez Notebook Evangelist

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    what is the dot....it's on the current CISCO CCNA course and the question has been asked as to who owns the "."

    I know, stupid question
     
    Alienwarez, Mar 13, 2008
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  4. Jalf

    Jalf Comrade Santa

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    No one. The dot is simply used to separate different parts of a domain name.

    You might as well ask who owns the space between your first and your last name.

    The dot isn't a domain, or part of a domain, or anything else. It's simply part of the syntax commonly used to describe domains.
     
    Jalf, Mar 13, 2008
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  5. frenchglen

    frenchglen Notebook Geek

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    Sounds like a trick question to me, :) If in doubt, just put Bill Gates, or the Military/NWO.
     
    frenchglen, Mar 13, 2008
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  6. Modly

    Modly Warranty Voider

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    Benjamin Franklin.

    You can't own the "." before com, net, org, etc. The part both before and after are owned, but not the dot itself.
     
    Modly, Mar 13, 2008
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  7. Nocturnal310

    Nocturnal310 Notebook Virtuoso

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    you own the car ... not the Road.
     
    Nocturnal310, Mar 14, 2008
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  8. Alienwarez

    Alienwarez Notebook Evangelist

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    I'll rephrase then....what does the . represent in the domain name, it was obviously put there for a reason. It's not like they are needed for extension purposes.
     
    Alienwarez, Mar 14, 2008
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  9. Jalf

    Jalf Comrade Santa

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    Wrong. It *is* basically there for extension purposes.
    It's there so that you can have a "google" subdomain under the "com" top level domain.

    It's simply there because we need to be able to represent an unknown number of domain names, so we need *something* to separate them.
    If we didn't have the dot, google would have to buy the domain "googlecom".
    Now, how exactly would we know that this comes under the "com" top level domain?
    How would we distinguish it from someone who bought "goo.gle.com"?
    That too would be written as "googlecom".

    That's all the . is for. To separate parts of the domain name, so that it can be extended with new domains (for example .com can be extended to encompass both a google.com domain and microsoft.com)
     
    Jalf, Mar 14, 2008
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  10. WackyT

    WackyT Notebook Deity

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    I think what you are trying to allude to is the dot at the very end of *****.com . that is implied, and not typed. These are serviced by the root name servers, of which there are 13 on the Internet throughout the world.

    The root name servers have the responsibility of the ending dot in all internet addresses. These direct you to the top level domain servers (com, net, us)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nameserver

    To answer your question, I think InterNIC (Internet Network Information Center) owns the root name space.
    EDIT: Actually, it's now ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). InterNIC was replaced by ICANN in 1998. And the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) under ICANN is the administrator of the DNS Root Zone.
     
    WackyT, Mar 14, 2008
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  11. Alienwarez

    Alienwarez Notebook Evangelist

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    Thank You WackyT knew we would get there eventually....So its root level domain, above top-level?
     
    Alienwarez, Mar 15, 2008
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  12. WackyT

    WackyT Notebook Deity

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    DNS works from right to left.

    First search is for root level (.) to top level (com, net, edu, org, Et cetera)
    Second is for top level to second level (microsoft, yahoo, google, Et cetera)
     
    WackyT, Mar 15, 2008
    #12