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The Internet is an increasingly valuable personal and business tool. We at Sabine Internet want you to have as much information about the Internet and its uses as possible. Two of the most important concepts about the Internet are Domain Names and Domain Hosting. Understanding these two concepts will help you use the Internet more efficiently for personal and business pursuits.

First, we will look at Domain Hosting. Besides email, the most heavily used part of the Internet is searching for and browsing the information on web pages that businesses, organizations and individuals have published on the web for our use. In order for these web pages to be found and served up for viewing on demand, they must be placed on a computer called a web server. In the Internet world, a server is often called a host, hence the name domain host or web host. Domain Hosting is the process of loading or publishing your own personal or business web page onto a web server for everyone to see and use. Sabine Internet dial-up accounts give you 5MB of web space on our web server for that purpose. If your personal username is sam, then your web page address on our server would be http://members.sabinenet.com/sam. You could publish your web page(s) to this location and everyone in the world could browse your site for information. We do not charge extra for this space if you are a business, so if your business username with Sabine Internet is mybusiness, then your business web address would be http://members.sabinenet.com/mybusiness. The advantage of hosting on our server is that it is FREE with your paid-up account. The disadvantage is that you are harder to find on the Internet(see below). Please  Email Elvis or call (409)787-3833 for more information on web pages.

A Domain Name is a unique address on the Internet. Just as you have a unique postal address so that the postman can deliver your mail, on the Internet, a Domain Name is a unique address for Internet entities. The Domain Name of Sabine Internet’s web server is www.sabinenet.com while our email server address is mail.sabinenet.com. As you can see, a Domain Name is a series of names separated by periods. The name on the right of a Domain Name is the highest priority part of the name and several have been assigned by the Internet authorities. The most common are:

The rightmost part of a Domain Name is also called the top level domain. The name that is immediately to the left of the top level domain(sabinenet in our case) is called a second level domain name. These names are created by registering them with an agency set up for that purpose. In the very early days of the Internet, the U.S. Government did this, but it became clear that this was a very big undertaking. Hence, the major Internet players agreed to create an independent agency, Internic, whose address is www.internic.net, to take over this job.

What’s in a name? Well, on the Internet, your Domain Name serves two purposes. It serves as your Internet identity, and it allows you to be found easily. When you are surfing the world wide web(that’s where the www came from) it is simple to find many companies just by their name. It is easy to guess who www.ford.com or www.gm.com are. Likewise, if you own a Domain Name such as yourbusiness.com it is easy for people to find your web site because they already know your name.

The only problem is that with millions of these names already registered, it may be hard to find a name that describes your business that is not already taken. Hence, if you can find an Internet Domain Name that really fits your business, you should register it immediately before someone else does. Even if you don’t use the name right away, registering the name will reserve it for your use in the future. You can search to see if a given name is taken, by going to the web page www.networksolutions.com and clicking on WHOIS. You can "test" prospective names by entering them to see if they are already taken. For instance, I really wanted sabine.net for the name of Sabine Internet - too bad, someone in Germany has it. At this location, you can only search for second level names such as yourbusiness.com not www.yourbusiness.com. If necessary, call us at Sabine Internet, and we will help you.

The major advantage of having your own Domain Name, is that you are easier to find. Instead of members.sabinenet.com/mybusiness, a potential customer would look at www.mybusiness.com. Clearly, the second address is easier and more valuable. The Internet search engines such as Yahoo!(another major topic to be covered later) will also find and catalog www.mybusiness.com before members.sabinenet.com/mybusiness. So, suppose that you have your own Domain Name registered and you have constructed some web pages that really advertise your business well. In order for these web pages to be seen by your customers, they must be hosted on a web server. Sabine Internet has a dedicated domain hosting server, a Cobalt RAQ located in Houston, with a very high speed connection to the Internet backbone. This RAQ server does nothing but serve web pages and email for Internet domains. This means that you can have an email address such as sam@mybusiness.com rather than sam@sabinenet.com. Again the domain name is easier and more intuitive. Using your own Domain Name on a dedicated web and email server is the most powerful way for you to have an Internet presence. The table below shows the specifications and charges for hosting your own domain on our RAQ server. Please call or email Elvis Stone for more details on this important service.