Oct 16, 2020
Short Guide to The Domain Name
I just wonder how the business of domain name work.
Where the money goes?
For example when purchasing the .com domain, the money is going to split like this.
~2% → ICANN
~15% → Registrar and Reseller
~80% → Verisign
~3% → Banking
Let’s explain who is who
ICANN
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers oversee the domain name. They do mostly about setting the standard, reporting.
They don’t do the business part directly but collect some fee from their authorized operator.
Registrar
Registrar is the operator who register the domain name for you.
Since ICANN doesn’t do registrar themselves, they authorize some operator to do it. Only the following 2,000 registrar is official according to ICANN.
Reseller
Anyone outside the list above cannot register directly. So the “Reseller” are another layer who do the register for you and collect the fee.
Most of local operator belongs to this category.
From the registrar perspective, they have less headaches. Earn smaller buck but at much higher volume and delegate the work to the reseller.
You can check the result who exactly is your registrar with the lookup:
Who is Verisign?
The domain ending can be open like .net or own by some company e.g the .com is monopoly by only one company, Verisign.
Yes, everyone have to pay to Verisign for .com.
They own the registry/database.
Collision?
At this point, I think it’s pretty clear why there is no collision. Only ~2,000 can register and each domain ending operated by single company or organization i.e. single database.
Different type of domain
- Generic Top Level Domain → gTLD
e.g..com,.net,.org - Country Code Top Level Domain → ccTLD
e.g..uk,.th
**Cannot lookup with whois**
Operated by organization in each country
This can be check in IANA site here
https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db
In my country.this managed by THNIC
RDAP and Whois
RDAP is the modern version of Whois but information is similar. The important part is showing who is the registrar.
