Terms for Traversing the Internet

The Internet was originally developed by the U.S. government as a fail-safe communications system. Internet has evolved into the largest computer network on the planet. You can do a variety of different things on the Internet. The main topics Internet is used for are electronic mail, on-line conversation, information retrieval, bulletin boards, and games and gossip. More specific examples include searching library catalogs in Australia, downloading sound files from an archive in Boston, sending e-mail to the Czech Republic, and conducting network wide searches for files containing the word “Football.” You can read discussion groups on many different topics (including jokes), search for e-mail addresses of your friends, or conduct real-time discussions with other people.

The Internet is a lot of computers connected together connected to other computers. TCP/IP is the language that governs all communications between the Internet.

An Internet address has two parts separated by the @ symbol. The left side of the @ symbol is the user name. The right side of the @ symbol is the domain name which identifies a particular computer on a network. My e-mail address at St. Christopher’s is Berndtl@stcva.org. The right-most component of the e-mail address serves as a broad category description and is called the domain.

See below for a few common examples.

Domains - In the US, top-level domains are used much more widely than the country code:

.com - commercial bodies http://www.nbc.com/, http://www.abc.com, www.cbs.com

.edu – educational institutions (colleges, universities) http://www.virginia.edu

.gov - U. S. government http://www.whitehouse.gov/, www.nasa.gov, www.cia.gov

.mil - U. S. armed services (name@psab.aorcentaf.af.mil)

EpesJY@1FSSG.USMC.MIL

.net – Internet service (networking organizations) www.worldnet.att.net, www.earthlink.net,

.org - anything else that doesn’t fit elsewhere, such as professional societies or St. Catherines (www.st.catherines.org) or www.vste.org, http://www.neccsite.org/, http://www.stcva.org/, http://www.iste.org

.int organizations http://www.redcross.int/International Red Cross http://www.nato.int/ North Atlantic Treat Organization

sf.ca.us geographically based

@k12.pvt.state.us or Governor’s school e-mails for example are name@gsgis.k12.va.us

Because of the growth of the Internet new top level domain names needed to be added. The top level domains that were added are .aero for the air-transport industry http://www.information.aero/

.biz for businesses http://www.neulevel.biz

.coop for cooperatives Costa Rica—dot Coop, the sponsor of the new .coop top-level Internet domain, announced name registration web site is now available in Spanish. The multilingual site will facilitate .coop registration in Mexico, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, and other Spanish-speaking countries in which cooperatives play a key economic and business role.

http://www.organicvalley.coop

http://www.organicegg.coop

http://www.organicmoo.coop

.info for all uses http://www.nic.info

basketballhistory.info A directory of team memorabilia items and basketball posters.

londongolf.info An exclusive directory of golf courses in and around London.

.museum for museums http://musedoma.museum , a list of all .museum names in the registry http://index.museum/

http://national.healthandmedicine.washingtondc.museum/ a cool museum where you can see the bullet that took Abraham Lincoln's life as well as fragments of his skull and a lock of his hair.

.name (for individuals) billed as the domain for e-mail and web address expressly for individuals http://www.nic.name/consumer/index.html www.ingridalexandra.name and www.prinsesseingrid.name,

and .pro for professionals On June 26, 2001, .biz and .info became operational.

The new top level domain .biz is not for personal or non-commercial uses however, .info is truly generic and has no limitations. The new top level domain .name is for personal domain names or names of fictional characters that you hold the trademark for.

.travel is used by organizations whose main activity is in the travel industry. New domains are being created because .com is getting so crowded. However as this article says they probably won’t give their .com up but will direct them to a .travel site.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2005-10-03-new-travel-domain_x.htm

A list of country code domain names can be found here. http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld-whois.htm

Last Updated 10/9/05

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