NuclearVision
hello everyone.
i was wondering who is behind the domain names?
lets say i rent a domain name for ten years, who am i paying? who has the right to benefit alone from this universal web. is there some kind of universal agreement?
thanks.
rolf
You are paying the registrar, who are paying a small fee to IANA.
I think the registrars also have to pay licensing fees (which, on the other hand, are not exactly small) to IANA as well.
hasseily
When you buy a domain name, it will go through the following:
[ Reseller - Reseller - Reseller] - Registrar - Registry - ICANN
Let's go through it backwards: ICANN assigns top level domains (TLDs) to specific registries whose job is to manage them. So for example, .com is assigned to Verisign. Why must a registry be a monopoly for a TLD? Because in part the registry's job is to manage name conflicts since a single domain (say abc.com) can only be assigned once.
Next, until a few years ago, the rule was that a registry being a monopoly, it was not allowed to sell directly to end users. Otherwise it'd be able to jack up the prices and provide sub-par service the way any monopoly works. So ICANN decided that registries would have to sell domains through registrars. You can (and do) have many dozens of registrars for each TLD, providing decent marketplace competition. Registrars handle customer billing, support, etc... and their interaction with registries is to validate, assign and transfer domains.
Finally, registrars often have resellers (and resellers of resellers and so on) that take commissions on domains sold. For example, say registrar X wants to sell to small businesses in Uganda. It partners with a Ugandan telco and tells it it'll give the telco $5 for each domain sold through the telco.
Pricing wise, the reseller sells at a certain price. It takes a reseller fee from that price. The registrar then pays the registry a fixed domain price (all registrars get domains from a registry at the same price). The registry then pays ICANN a domain fee, either flat or % of domain price.
To add a wrinkle to the above, since ICANN announced the thousand new TLDs (.london, .buy, ...) it has relaxed some of its rules, including that registry and registrar can now be combined into a single entity. The reasoning there is that there will be so many TLDs that competition will be at the TLD level.
Hope this helps.