The term "domain" relates to the structure of the Namespace tree. But when you refer to a "zone," you need to know where the administrative boundaries are. You must know who delegates to whom and where they do that delegation. The entire Namespace is huge, and no single organization operates all of it. It must be sliced up into
administrative boundaries so that different organizations can run different portions. So, a zone describes how the namespace is divided up for administrative purposes. The .com domain includes .com and everything below, but the .com zone does not include information below it. For example, the IP address of blogs.verisign.com is not in the .com zone.
Zones represent administrative boundaries that are created by delegation. Higher levels of the Namespace delegate authority to lower levels. For example, the root zone delegates authority to the .com zone which delegates authority to the 80 million names beneath it. The IP addresses hang off of the nodes of each domain
name, and this information is not in the .com zone.
Want to hear more from Matt? Listen to his extremely informative (and rather entertaining) podcast "Ask Mr. DNS" that he records with his friend and co-DNS expert, Cricket Liu.
The first interview on VeriSign Live is with Matt Larson, Vice
President of DNS research. I met Matt when I joined VeriSign as a Web
producer in 2002. My first assignment was to re-brand the Acme Byte
& Wire site (Matt’s company) as one of VeriSign’s acquisitions.
Matt was extremely cordial about the situation, he understood why his
brand needed to be assimilated into the “collective.” But he seemed
crestfallen when it came time to bid farewell to the jaunty green and
white “Ask Mr. DNS” Logo. I was new to the world of Corporate Branding,
so I felt quite awkward about what had to be done. It made for some
uncomfortable moments for me on elevator rides to the fourth floor,
where we both sit.
Matt explained some of the important terms and concepts around the
Domain Name System, or the DNS. Matt described the DNS as a “massive
distributed database” whose main purpose is to map domain names (names
of computers), to IP addresses, which are the network addresses for
Internet servers.
“People
can remember names a lot easier than they can remember IP addresses,
and the guts of the Internet routers, switches and things need IP
addresses in order to route traffic, but it’s easier for people to
remember Domain Names than IP addresses. So the DNS performs this
critical function.”
Want to hear more from Matt? Listen to his extremely informative (and rather entertaining) podcast “Ask Mr. DNS” that he records with his friend and co-DNS expert, Cricket Liu.
