From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the
domain name system on the
Internet there is a need for databases to be kept of
which domain name maps to which IP address. A registry has
two main tasks:
- giving out domain names under their
top level domain to those who ask for them; and
- making the database of domain name
registrations available to the world at large.
Domain
registration:
Registries can only operate if the top
level domain they run has been delegated to them by
IANA. Hence, there can only be one registry for each top
level domain. If there is more than one index, confusion
would result (as has happened to a limited extent with the
.biz top level domain).
The endings of the domain name dictate
which organization controls them. In practice, this is the
organization that controls the
name servers for that domain. Therefore
ICANN has de facto control of the overall
Domain Name System because it controls the root name
servers.
Domain
registration: Registries make
the index available to the world via
Whois systems and via their name servers, for the
direction of internet traffic. Such systems have to be fully
redundant because loss of name servers can affect all
internet traffic sent to that domain.
