About Domains

	All About Domains
•	All web sites have both a domain name and an IP address. In fact, any application like your web site where others connect to your computer, for example NetMeeting or an email server, also have both a domain name and an IP address. You're no doubt familiar with domain names; our domain name is TZO.COM. Other well-known domain names are YAHOO.COM, and AOL.COM. The ".COM" part is called the top-level domain; we call "TZO.COM" a private domain; and "FRED.TZO.COM" a sub-domain.

•	An organization called the Internic manages the top-level domains of .COM, .ORG, and .NET and .EDU. This organization maintains a database of all the domain names that are already registered within the .COM, .ORG, .NET and .EDU top-level domains. When you register a domain name you do so for a given length of time and during that time no one else can use your domain name without your permission. You have, in effect, rented that domain name for a while.

•	The cost of registering a domain name depends on the number of years you choose. But once you have a domain name you can continue to keep it so long as you pay the registration fee when it comes due.Please understand that if you're late with your renewal payment your domain name becomes available and can be taken by someone else. The Internic has no grace period for late payments.

•	TZO.COM is setup to register domain names for you and we provide this as one of our services. But, like the Internic, we cannot offer a grace period either. If your registration expires your domain name becomes fair game for anyone else to register for their own use. However, just registering a domain name does not automatically make your server "Internet ready." The reason is, in part, because of the IP address.

•	We mentioned earlier that all sites that host a web site, or other similar application, need both a domain name and an IP address. The IP address is a number of up to 12 digits and this number is the Internet address of your website server, or NetMeeting server, or Internet game server, or any other kind of Internet server. Although we call a web site or other host application by its domain name, over the Internet the computers address each other not by their domain names, but by their IP addresses. When you typed TZO.COM into your browser to connect to our web site, a function within the Internet translated our domain name into our IP address in order to link your browser to our web site. The function that handled that translation was a domain name server, called a DNS server. For your domain name to become "Internet ready" your domain name and your IP address must reside on a DNS server and that server "resolves" the domain name. That means simply that the DNS server associates your domain name with your IP address.

•	That's the problem TZO solves! We have developed special DNS server software that allows us to detect your current IP address. When your domain name resides on our TZO DNS servers, our DNS server software can associate your domain name with your current IP address. The result is that you can host an Internet application at your own site even if you have a dynamic IP address.

•	To make your domain name "Internet ready" you order TZO and put your domain name on our DNS servers. If you have already registered a top-level domain name with the Internic, you can use our DNS servers to host your DNS records. We have instructions on our web site on how to do this.

•	If you have a sub-domain within our TZO domain, for example FRED.TZO.COM you do not need to register it with the Internic. All TZO sub-domain names reside on our dynamic DNS servers.