Difference between Domain Name and URL
In the world of the internet and websites, Domain Name and URL are very common terms and are used interchangeably, but there is a lot of difference in these two terms. In this article, we will learn what is the difference between the Domain Name and URL.
1. Domain Name :
It is very hard to remember the IP address of the server. Hence, the domain name is the text form of the IP address and it is more human friendly and easy to learn. It is a part of the URL and it is mostly used for branding of the organization. All the parts of the domain name are separated by the periods or dots. An example of the domain name is www.geeksforgeeks.org. A domain name can be divided into the following parts.
Type of Server : The www or World Wide Web represents the web server.
Host Name : It is generally the main name of the domain like google , geeksforgeeks etc.
Top-level Domain : The last part of the domain name is top-level domain. Examples are .com,.in,.au etc.
2. Uniform Resource Locator :
Uniform Resource Locator is known as a URL. It is a string that provides the complete address of the web page i.e, this is also known as a web address. In order to access a particular website you just need to put the URL in the search bar to find the website. For example, the web address of the google home page is https://www.google.com/. A URL can be divided into different parts.
Method or Protocol : This is the method or protocol used to retrieve the file from the server.
Host Name : It is also known as the domain name or a human-friendly text form for the IP address of the server where the file or document is located.
Port : It is just a protocol number. It is just a communication endpoint.
Path : It is the location of the file on the server.
Difference between Domain Name and URL :
| S. No. | Basis of Comparison | Domain Name | Uniform Resource Locator |
| 1. | Basics | The main motive of the domain name is to make it easier to access a website. They are more used as a brand and are usually referred to as a brand name. | If you want to find a particular website URL is best for it because a URL is a complete web address to find a particular website. |
| 2. | Address | A domain name is a human-friendly text form of the IP address. | URL is a string that represents the complete web address of any web page. |
| 3. | Represented as | It is the part of the URL that is more human friendly. | It is the string that represents a complete web address that contains the domain name. |
| 4. | Consists of | It contains three parts-Top Level Domain, Intermediate Level, and the Low Level. | It also contains the following parts- method, protocol, hostname, port, and path of the file. |
| 5. | Example | Example: geeksforgeeks.org | Example: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/ |
| 6. | Year | The first domain name registration was Symbolics.com by on 15th Match, 1985. | URL was defined by Tim Berners Lee in the year 1994. |
| 7. | Working | A domain name is used in conjunction with a domain name system, which includes the top-level domain, DNS caching, and an authoritative DNS server. | URLs, on the other hand, are made up of a variety of elements such as protocols, parameters, domain names, path ports, and so on. |
What is a Domain Name?
Domain names are a key part of the Internet infrastructure. They provide a human-readable address for any web server available on the Internet.
Any Internet-connected computer can be reached through a public IP Address, either an IPv4 address (e.g. 173.194.121.32 ) or an IPv6 address (e.g., 2027:0da8:8b73:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:1337 ).
Computers can handle such addresses easily, but people have a hard time finding out who is running the server or what service the website offers. IP addresses are hard to remember and might change over time.
To solve all those problems we use human-readable addresses called domain names.
Deeper dive
Structure of domain names
A domain name has a simple structure made of several parts (it might be one part only, two, three…), separated by dots and read from right to left:
Each of those parts provides specific information about the whole domain name.
TLDs tell users the general purpose of the service behind the domain name. The most generic TLDs ( .com , .org , .net ) don’t require web services to meet any particular criteria, but some TLDs enforce stricter policies so it is clearer what their purpose is. For example:
- Local TLDs such as .us , .fr , or .se can require the service to be provided in a given language or hosted in a certain country — they are supposed to indicate a resource in a particular language or country.
- TLDs containing .gov are only allowed to be used by government departments.
- The .edu TLD is only for use by educational and academic institutions.
TLDs can contain special as well as latin characters. A TLD’s maximum length is 63 characters, although most are around 2–3.
The labels are what follow the TLD. A label is a case-insensitive character sequence anywhere from one to sixty-three characters in length, containing only the letters A through Z , digits 0 through 9 , and the ‘-‘ character (which may not be the first or last character in the label). a , 97 , and hello-strange-person-16-how-are-you are all examples of valid labels.
The label located right before the TLD is also called a Secondary Level Domain (SLD).
A domain name can have many labels (or components). It is not mandatory nor necessary to have 3 labels to form a domain name. For instance, www.inf.ed.ac.uk is a valid domain name. For any domain you control (e.g. mozilla.org), you can create «subdomains» with different content located at each, like developer.mozilla.org, iot.mozilla.org, or bugzilla.mozilla.org.
Buying a domain name
Who owns a domain name?
You cannot «buy a domain name». This is so that unused domain names eventually become available to be used again by someone else. If every domain name was bought, the web would quickly fill up with unused domain names that were locked and couldn’t be used by anyone.
Instead, you pay for the right to use a domain name for one or more years. You can renew your right, and your renewal has priority over other people’s applications. But you never own the domain name.
Companies called registrars use domain name registries to keep track of technical and administrative information connecting you to your domain name.
Note: For some domain name, it might not be a registrar which is in charge of keeping track. For instance, every domain name under .fire is managed by Amazon.
Finding an available domain name
To find out whether a given domain name is available,
- Go to a domain name registrar’s website. Most of them provide a «whois» service that tells you whether a domain name is available.
- Alternatively, if you use a system with a built-in shell, type a whois command into it, as shown here for mozilla.org :
1998-01-24T05:00:00Z Updated Date: 2013-12-08T01:16:57Z Registry Expiry Date: 2015-01-23T05:00:00Z Sponsoring Registrar:MarkMonitor Inc. (R37-LROR) Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 292 WHOIS Server: Referral URL: Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited Domain Status: clientUpdateProhibited Registrant ID:mmr-33684 Registrant Name:DNS Admin Registrant Organization:Mozilla Foundation Registrant Street: 650 Castro St Ste 300 Registrant City:Mountain View Registrant State/Province:CA Registrant Postal Code:94041 Registrant Country:US Registrant Phone:+1.6509030800
As you can see, I can’t register mozilla.org because the Mozilla Foundation has already registered it.
On the other hand, let’s see if I could register afunkydomainname.org :
The process is quite straightforward:
- Go to a registrar’s website.
- Usually there is a prominent «Get a domain name» call to action. Click on it.
- Fill out the form with all required details. Make sure, especially, that you have not misspelled your desired domain name. Once it’s paid for, it’s too late!
- The registrar will let you know when the domain name is properly registered. Within a few hours, all DNS servers will have received your DNS information.
Note: In this process the registrar asks you for your real-world address. Make sure you fill it properly, since in some countries registrars may be forced to close the domain if they cannot provide a valid address.
DNS refreshing
DNS databases are stored on every DNS server worldwide, and all these servers refer to a few special servers called «authoritative name servers» or «top-level DNS servers» — these are like the boss servers that manage the system.
Whenever your registrar creates or updates any information for a given domain, the information must be refreshed in every DNS database. Each DNS server that knows about a given domain stores the information for some time before it is automatically invalidated and then refreshed (the DNS server queries an authoritative server and fetches the updated information from it). Thus, it takes some time for DNS servers that know about this domain name to get the up-to-date information.
How does a DNS request work?
As we already saw, when you want to display a webpage in your browser it’s easier to type a domain name than an IP address. Let’s take a look at the process:
- Type mozilla.org in your browser’s location bar.
- Your browser asks your computer if it already recognizes the IP address identified by this domain name (using a local DNS cache). If it does, the name is translated to the IP address and the browser negotiates contents with the web server. End of story.
- If your computer does not know which IP is behind the mozilla.org name, it goes on to ask a DNS server, whose job is precisely to tell your computer which IP address matches each registered domain name.
- Now that the computer knows the requested IP address, your browser can negotiate contents with the web server.
Next steps
Okay, we talked a lot about processes and architecture. Time to move on.
- If you want to get hands-on, it’s a good time to start digging into design and explore the anatomy of a web page.
- It’s also worth noting that some aspects of building a website cost money. Please refer to how much it costs to build a website.
- Or read more about Domain Names on Wikipedia.
- You can also find here a fun and colorful explanation of how DNS works.
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This page was last modified on Jul 3, 2023 by MDN contributors.
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