Domain jargon plainly explained
On this page you find explanations for numerous terms that are used in connection with ironDNS®.
A service operates on several servers all over the world.
However, all servers have the same Internet address.
Asynchronous and Incremental Transfer Zone,
respectively: Transfers zone content from the master to the slaves.
Very good name server software, managed as open source by
ISC.
Country Code Top-Level-Domain: A TLD
consisting of two letters and administered on country level.
Typical examples are “.de” for Germany or “.uk” for the United Kingdom.
Distributed Denial of Service: A distributed attack on a
technical resource from many places on the Internet. See also
DoS.
Domain Name System.
DNS Secure Extensions: Answers from DNS servers contain not
only the actual data but also cryptographic signatures.
Denial of Service: An attack on a technical resource based on
overloading a service.
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority: The organisation taking
care of the global coordination of the root zone of the DNS.
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers:
The US-based organisation responsible for domain names and IP
addresses all over the world.
Internet Engineering Task Force: An organisation dealing with
the technical advancement of the Internet.
Results often take the form of RFCs.
Internet System Consortium: The consortium developing and
maintaining the name server software BIND.
See Zone Lock.
new generic Top-Level-Domain:
A TLD which is relatively new, that is introduced
after the year 2000.
New DNSSEC standard preventing attackers from
gaining information about the structure of the zone, and thus from
spying on the contents of a zone.
One-Time Password: A password that can be used just once.
After usage the password becomes invalid. Usually such a password
is only valid for a very short time (5 min for ironDNS®).
OTPs are used in connection with Zone Lock.
Pretty Good Privacy is a standardised method to encrypt,
decrypt and sign data. ironDNS® uses this method to encrypt
OTPs for the Zone Lock
functionality.
The owner of a domain name.
A reseller for domains, registering domain names on behalf of the
registrants.
The registrar has access to the data base of a
registry.
The administrator of a top level domain. For “.de” this is DENIC,
for example, for “.com” it is VeriSign.
Request for Comments: A request to comment on a technical
proposal. Is often considered a quasi-standard later on.
Second-Level-Domain: A domain name having only a dot and a
TLD on the right.
Example: In “mycompany.com”, “mycompany” is the SLD.
See also TLD.
Simple Object Access Protocol: A technical standard used by
computer systems to exchange commands and data.
In the context of Internet providers, this term refers to those that
only sell Internet connectivity and do not rely on other providers.
Top Level Domain: A domain name having no further elements on
the right. Example: in “mycompany.com”, “com” is the TLD.
See also SLD.
Opposite of anycast.
A server on the Internet is given a unique Internet address that is
not used by any other server in the world.
The Zone Lock functionality provides a granulated 2-factor
authentication for DNS zones and substantially increases the
security and integrity of important DNS zones.
Further interesting information around ironDNS®
