Like how do people sell domains and could I take one for myself without using their services?
And most importantly, where does it (the domain) come from?
In: Technology
A domain is practically just a name. You can buy a domain from a domain registar. Once bought the domain is unavailable for everyone else. You have to renew it after a certain amount of time. You can connect the domain to an IP address. The IP address is like the street address for a computer/server. This computer can store the files for a website.
You can also just keep the domain name and resell it. You can transfer the domain to someone by giving them the password for your domain registar. There are also services that makes sure the transfer is safe and that you get your money.
You buy it from a [domain name registrar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_registrar). There’s a bunch out there.
[ICANN lookup](https://lookup.icann.org) gives you the ability to look up the registration data for domain names
Domains have to be registered with ICANN, the international organization that maintains records of all domains. This is done using one of the many registrar companies for a small fee. This registration goes into a database that keeps track of all domains, their owners, and the IP address(es) to which the traffic should be directed. The IP information is then propagated to the internet.
You cannot just claim a domain if it is already owned by someone else. The current owner must release the domain to you. Registration does expire though, and if the current owner does not renew their registration, you can then claim it.
Every router or server connected to the internet has an IP address. It’s a long string of numbers and letters. In theory, if you knew the IP address of a website that you wanted to visit, you could visit them by entering that address into your browser. The problem is that this is super cumbersome.
So in the early days of the internet, they came up with DNS, which is the Domain Name System. DNS maintains a list of domain names and the IP addresses that they correspond to. It’s essentially the internet’s phone book. DNS allows you to access websites by entering their domain names, so that you don’t have to remember their IP addresses. DNS is managed by a group called ICANN – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. They allow licensed registrars to add domain names to the database for a fee. And that’s why you have to use a registered domain registrar – otherwise, your domain name won’t end up in DNS.
If by taking you mean buying, you can practically buy any domain anywhere.
Taking someone’s domain when it’s registered is not possible unless you’ve the transfer secret code.
Domains on the internet is based on a system called the Domain Name System (DNS). DNS is basically a phone book that translates domain names into IP addresses (a number that uniquely identifies a computer on the internet).
When you register a domain name, you are essentially paying a company to add a record on their **DNS server** to point that domain to an IP address of your choosing. Anyone can run a DNS server, and continuing the analogy, any idiot with enough resources can publish their own phone book and deliver it to houses across the globe. But the trick is getting anyone to use your phone book when there is already a de facto “official” phone book that everyone trusts and uses.
And therein lies the problem: everyone important in the realm of computers and the internet already agreed that a group called ICANN would control the **root DNS servers** that points to the DNS servers for the **Top-Level Domains** (TLD; .com, .net etc). And in turn the trusted companies that run the TLD DNS servers allow a select group of trusted registrars to run DNS servers for **second-level domains** under the TLDs (**example**.com).
Resolving DNS is a network of trust. Operating systems trust routers, which trust ISPs, who trust domain registrars, who trust TLD registrars, who trust the ICANN. You can configure your devices to use and trust whatever DNS servers you want, but that only works to resolve domain names on devices you control. Getting everyone else on the internet to trust you is the hard part.
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