What is a domain name

There are two types of "Domain" Names, which can get confused. Usually the term refers to an Internet Domain Name, but sometimes can refer to a Windows NT Domain Name.

Internet Domain Name

Internet Domain Names were developed as a way to easily identify servers on the Internet. When the Internet first started these domain names, and their related IP Addresses, were all saved in a single file (called a hosts file. There is still one on every computer) that resided on every single computer on the Internet. This was fine when there were only a handful of computers, but by the time the number of servers reached the thousands, keeping these files in sync rapidly became a nightmare.

In order to make the management of these host names easier,