An overview of the domains, registrars, registries and other related bodies and how they interact

1. Domains, Registrars, Registries:
Everything You Need To Know
Michele Neylon

2. Who am I?
Michele Neylon
- Founder / CEO Blacknight
- Chair Registrar SG
ICANN, ASOP.eu, Eurid Registrar
Advisory Board
- http://mneylon.tel
- @mneylon
- http://michele.me/blog
- On most other social networks ..

3. Let’s Talk about domains + IPs

4. What’s a domain?

5. What’s a domain?
• http://www.blacknight.com
– Blackight – the “string”
• .com – the “extension”
• www – an A record / sub-domain
• http – the protocol, could be https (secure), FTP etc

6. Why Use A Domain?
• Domain is easier to remember than an IP
• 1 IP => many domains (possibly)
• IPv4 192.168.0.1
• IPv6 2a01:a8:201::220

7. 72 153 221 106

8. Another Real World Example
173.194.45.67
That’s google.com
(but you knew that right?)

9. What about IPs?
• “Governed” by RIRs
• Regions: RIPE, AfrNIC, APNIC, ARIN,LACNIC
• ISPs + hosting providers => LIR
• Users get IPs from ISP

10. Which “Actors” Are Involved?

11. Which “Actors” Are Involved?
• Registry eg. Verisign, AFNIC
• Registrar eg., GoDaddy, OVH, Blacknight
• (Reseller) – thousands of companies
• Registrant – people who register domains – individuals
& businesses & organisations (eg. Interpol)
• Users – anyone using the ‘net

12. Confused yet?

13. Head Hurts?

14. What’s a registrar?
• Company that sells / leases domain names
• Contract with ICANN (http://www.icann.org)
• Governed by the contract (RAA) + local law
• Commercial entities – with different business
models
– DNS services, Email services, Web hosting services
& way more

15. What’s a reseller?

16. What’s a reseller?
• Company that resells / leases domain names
• NO Contract with ICANN
(http://www.icann.org)
• Commercial entities – with different business
models
– DNS services, Email services, Web hosting services
& way more

17. What’s ICANN?
• Co-ordinator
• Security / Stability
• Oversight on Registrars AND Registries for
gTLDs
• NO oversight on country codes (cctlds) eg. .fr
or .ch

18. What’s the RAA?
• Registrar Accreditation Agreement
• Contract between ICANN & registrars
• Current version is 2009 RAA
• Small number of companies on 2001 version
• New version – 2013 RAA expected later this
year – possibly July (?)

19. How Do I Identify X?
• “Whois”
• DNS
• Ask 

20. Whois
• Whois domain.tld
• Eg. Whois mneylon.com
– Registrar
– Registration data (registration / expiry)
– Nameservers
– Registrant OR proxy / privacy data

21. DNS
• Where is the domain pointing?
• Where is the “record” pointing? Ie. www.domain.tld
could be with Hoster X, but the mail (MX record) might
be somewhere else
• Tools like “dig”

22. Which “Actors” Are Involved?
ICANN
Registrar
Registry
Reseller
Registrant

23. Too Simplistic?

24. Small Paws/Pause?

25. What about ccTLDs?

26. What about ccTLDs?
• Governed (usually) by national law
• NOT controlled by ICANN
• *some* have contracts with registrars
• *some* sell direct
• *some* are good, *some* are bad
• LACNIC / ICANN / CENTR – places / orgs where they
meet BUT they are NOT controlled

27. The Future?

28. The Future?

29. Anything else?

30. YAWN?

31. Questions?

33. Thank You …