www.earthclick.net Your local full-service ISP

Domains are a common and unique name used to identify discrete and related information on the Internet. A domain name is the most common representation, and looks like this: "domainname.ext" where "ext" is a Top Level Domain extension ("TLD") and "domainname" is the primary root name for the domain. These are examples of domain names:

• earthclick.net
• oip.net
• gamizon.com

Domain names are a convenient representation of services, but the underlying addressing mechanism for ALL Internet activity is an IP Address. IP addresses take the form ###.###.###.### (e.g. 192.168.0.1, current called IPv4). See content/IP for a more detailed explanation of IP addresses and routing.

Domain name references are converted to IP numbers so that your Internet requests can be delivered to the right place.

Top Level Domains
The most common TLD is ".com" (commercial), but other TLD's include ".org" (organization), ".net" (network), ".biz" (business) and ".us" (United States). As with ".us", each country has its own TLD, and new TLD's are created from time to time as part of the overall Internet addressing mechanism.

Registering Domain Names
Domains are registered through a Registration Service Provider such as OIP/Earthclick.net. There is a small annual charge for each registration. Registrations can be for one to ten years.