This page tries to detail the sometimes gory bureaucracy behind internet domains.
Whose domain is it anyway?
There are usually three parties involved in the ownership and control of most internet domains:
- the owner, that’s you, the customer;
- the registry, the shadowy organisation that has ultimate technical control of all domains (e.g. this is Nominet for domains ending in .uk); and
- the registrar, the friendly middle men (that’s us!) Each registry appoints registrars to deal with customers direct, and sets up automated systems for the registrar to deal with the owner’s requests on their behalf.
So on the whole, as a domain owner, you will only ever need to deal with your registrar company to register and manage your domains for you. Bytemark provide a control panel from which you can manage yours.
Legally domain ownership is a three way contract (as explained by Nominet, but applicable to most other domains).
What can ‘whois’ tell me?
The registries try to keep an accurate and up-to-date list of domain owners. They keep a database, which they charge the registrars with updating, which contains some extra details about each domain. This is usually called the ‘whois’ database (as in “who is…?”).
Details of each registar’s database are public (barring owner’s email addresses and phone numbers), and can be viewed by a “whois tool” on your computer. While all of this varies a little between registrars, for the most part, you can rely on finding:
- an administrative contact
- a billing contact
- a technical contact
as well as the aforementioned owner details. These can in theory all be different people, but on the whole, when you register through Bytemark, the owner is you, and every other contact is set to us.
Unhelpful registrars
Registrars (who have technical control over your domain) don’t always do what the owner asks. This usually happens when the owner asks the registrar to help transfer the domain to another one (i.e. the old registrar will be losing business). Sometimes they will make it difficult, insisting on signed faxes on headed paper, large “exit fees” and so on.
You can always bypass your current registrar and get you domain moved to another one without the help of the old one, going straight to the registry. This is not always free of charge, but ultimately the registry is keeping the domain for you, their network of registrars are dispensible as a last resort.