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Question about how web domains work (lemmy.one)

submitted 1 year ago by tubbadu@lemmy.one to c/technology@beehaw.org

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Hello fellow Lemmings! I hope this is the right place to ask this. I don't understand how web domains work. Let's say I want to buy the domain "abcdefghi.net". I can go to a domain provider like haruba or godaddy and just buy it. but how can they, a private, sell me these domains? I'm not talking about the hosting, but just the domain. where do they register this domain I'm buying? isn't it possible to register it myself instead of paying these services to do it for me?

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[–] Parsnip8904@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I have some understanding of how this works:

There's a non-profit organisation called ICANN at the top who basically controls everything and assigns TLD (top level domains like .com) and so on to registries.
Registries host different TLDs and keep track of all domains under them.
Registrar is an ICANN accredited company that can sell domain names. When you buy abcd.net from say Google domains, Google basically files your domain name with the .net registery.

As far as I know, you can't buy a domain from ICANN directly because they don't sell stuff? Only registrars can.

In practice there are registrars that charge you the actual price of the domain + a small registration fee (15 cents maybe) in a transparent way without any markup. An example is cloudflare.

Also in practice stay away from GoDaddy. They're one of the most horrible companies I know. Porkbun, cloudflare, namecheap, namesilo, Google are all usually moderately priced good options. You can find details of all registrars for a tld and their prices using tld-list like: tld-list.com/tld/nameoftld.

Hope that helps :)

[–] nogooduser@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also, be very careful about who ultimately owns the domain name that you’re buying.

I know of someone who “bought” a domain for a ridiculous price and it turned out that they didn’t actually own it. The company registered it in their own name so that he wasn’t able to transfer it to another registrar and had to continue to pay the high fees if he wanted to keep the domain.

Well shady.

[–] Parsnip8904@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't that parking? I don't think this would be legal in many places given there wasn't a completely egregarious contact he missed or something similar.

[–] realslef@fedia.io 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You say that, but lots of people used to fall for it.

[–] Parsnip8904@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah. I am wary of anyone who offers registrations drastically cheaper than the cost. The usual gotcha I've seen is that after the first year, the renewal fees are astronomical end they charge unusually high fees for transfers. I guess ownership shenanigans can happen too.

[–] tubbadu@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

thanks for the tip! I'm not going to buy any domain, I was just curious about how they work

[–] realslef@fedia.io 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Google is not often regarded as Good. "Don't Be Evil" seems like a distant memory.

I suggest Gandi as an option that does some good.

[–] Parsnip8904@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

I mean I'm not a fan of their other services but they have been pretty okay as a domain registrar. Gandi is pretty decent too :) My favourite is prokbun.