The 3 Levels of Domain Name Control
April 6th, 2008As the domain name administrator for our company, I am often asked if we can “point” a certain domain name to some site or landing page. Webmasters know that “pointing” a domain name could have many meanings and implications, but to most people it means “if you type in this URL, it will take users here.” It occurred to me that there are three levels of control that you could have to point a domain name or URL somewhere. In most organizations they are performed by three different departments because they are very different functions, but they are interdependent and you need all three of them coordinated in order to “point” a domain name.
1. Domain Name Ownership
The highest level of control is to be a domain owner by registering a top level domain (TLD). A domain name is an asset and owning one means that you have legal rights to it, but it also means that you can choose which name servers the domain should use. A whois lookup can show the domain ownership details as well as the name servers for the domain. Being a domain owner does not mean that you have access to the name or the Web servers or the site’s content, but it does mean you have the power to control it.
What about subdomains? Subdomains do not need to be registered; in fact they are free and TLD owners have nothing to do with sub-domains. Name server administrators for TLDs simply add records to the DNS to create subdomains.
2. Name Server Control
Domain name servers (DNS) are like address books for domain names. In a typical address book one might have home telephone numbers, cell numbers, fax numbers, postal addresses and email addresses. Name servers tell computers where to go to when looking for different contact methods for domain names, like email or Web sites. Having control of a domain’s name servers means that you can point the domain and its sub-domains wherever you want to, as well as their email addresses.
3. Web Server Control
The name servers of a domain name would normally have the address as described above of the domain’s Web site. Such an address is normally a DNS A record or a CNAME and tells the world which Web server(s) to go to. Webmasters of these servers can configure them to respond as needed to requests, e.g. they have the ability to create URLs and redirects under that domain name, but they cannot create sub-domains and they cannot change the IP address of a domain (i.e. A or CNAME records).
What about URL Redirects?
The lowest level of domain control is when you can’t do any of the above, but you are able to redirect another domain to the one in question. In this case one doesn’t really have any control over the main domain and so it doesn’t count as a fourth level of control, but it is common to redirect a domain within one’s control to another URL.