Dot-Com revolution marks silver jubilee

by Prabuddha ATHUKORALA

The Internet has become such an invaluable part of our daily lifestyle that especially for the younger generation even a single day without accessing this modern marvel has become so difficult. In fact, many innovations have been made to facilitate that more people stay online on the move no matter which part of the world they might be.

The developments made in this field are so enormous; it is difficult to think that a mere 25 years ago only the first ever website was registered. Until then the World Wide Web was used only for research purposes by scholars and military purposes.

Initiation

The date was March 15, 1985, when Symbolics Computer Company made the bold move by registering the first domain name, symbolic.com. They would have never imagined that after such a short time period that little initiation could have such a telling effect the world over.

In the early days nobody seemed to be in a hurry to get a personal domain name. Only five were registered in 1985 and as one would expect most of the first 100 registrations were dominated by computer companies. Software giant Microsoft waited until 1991 to acquire their space on the internet.

However, the pace gradually picked up and the volume of the websites being registered each day is staggering. The count has reached almost two-hundred million and the number is on the rise. If the Internet continues its extraordinary growth over the coming year there is really no end in sight.

So what exactly is a domain name? In simple terms, it functions as a phonebook for the internet, which translates a familiar name into a machine readable form. In other words, MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from “en.wikipedia.org” claiming to be www.example.com translates an address like 192.0.32.10. So the next time you type in a web address, think for a while as there is a complicated process happening in the background.

Also, domain names come in various forms nowadays. Back in the good old days it was just “.com”. And even today it remains as the most famous and widely used domain name. Other names like “.net” and “.org” are catching up as familiar alternatives.

Imperative

Domain names having a country name is also growing in popularity especially among the business community. Initially, only the government controlled sector extensively use the country name domains such as www.lakehouse.lk , where “lk” stands for Sri Lankan origin.

Though, the technology keeps improving it has become imperative even for a small scale organisation to maintain a quality website. As a result the private sector also has switched to the usage of personalised website bearing the country domain name.

Domain Name Server (DNS) auctions have become a very common thing at present. And if you are really smart it is one of the easiest ways to earn big money. A domain name can be compared to a long term recession proof investment and a guaranteed earner without having to do much work.

Registering a website nowadays is as easy as sending an email and making an online payment through your credit card all in the comfort of your sofa. With inception giants such as godaddy.com who offer website registration facilities for very nominal rates many individuals are venturing into that field.

It was bought from Network Solutions in 1994 and changed hands in 2006 for $14 million. We can find out whether love or money is more important to us as the auction begins for the same yet again.

Domain

Currently, sitting on top of the most expensive domain name pile is insure.com, which was bought for $1.6 million in 2001 and fetched 10 times that figure last year when an insurance company bought it.

Hence having personal website with your own name is nothing to brag about anymore. Almost everyone who uses cyber space now has a unique domain or some personalised space which belongs to someone else.

When you think of it, the famous social networking website facebook.com, has more than 400 million registered users, and each of them is given the opportunity to maintain a vanity address. Henceforth, the day each one of us would have a custom, unique website is certainly not far off.