Network domain

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A network domain is an administrative grouping of multiple private computer networks or local hosts within the same infrastructure. [1] [2] [3] Domains can be identified using a domain name; domains which need to be accessible from the public Internet can be assigned a globally unique name within the Domain Name System (DNS).

A domain controller is a server that automates the logins, user groups, and architecture of a domain, rather than manually coding this information on each host in the domain. It is common practice, but not required, to have the domain controller act as a DNS server. [4] That is, it would assign names to hosts in the network based on their IP addresses.

Usage

Use of the term network domain first appeared in 1965 and saw increasing usage beginning in 1985. [5] It initially applied to the naming of radio stations based on broadcast frequency and geographic area. [6] It entered its current usage by network theorists to describe solutions to the problems of subdividing a single homogeneous LAN and joining multiple networks, possibly constituted of different network architectures. [7]

Related Research Articles

Active Directory (AD) is a directory service developed by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. Windows Server operating systems include it as a set of processes and services. Originally, only centralized domain management used Active Directory. However, it ultimately became an umbrella title for various directory-based identity-related services.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the associated entities. Most prominently, it translates readily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for locating and identifying computer services and devices with the underlying network protocols. The Domain Name System has been an essential component of the functionality of the Internet since 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IPv6</span> Version 6 of the Internet Protocol

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion, and was intended to replace IPv4. In December 1998, IPv6 became a Draft Standard for the IETF, which subsequently ratified it as an Internet Standard on 14 July 2017.

A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last non empty label of a fully qualified domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level domain is .com. Responsibility for management of most top-level domains is delegated to specific organizations by the ICANN, an Internet multi-stakeholder community, which operates the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and is in charge of maintaining the DNS root zone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Domain name</span> Identification string in the Internet

In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and for application-specific naming and addressing purposes. In general, a domain name identifies a network domain or an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, or a server computer.

Dynamic DNS (DDNS) is a method of automatically updating a name server in the Domain Name System (DNS), often in real time, with the active DDNS configuration of its configured hostnames, addresses or other information.

The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) are a suite of extension specifications by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for securing data exchanged in the Domain Name System (DNS) in Internet Protocol (IP) networks. The protocol provides cryptographic authentication of data, authenticated denial of existence, and data integrity, but not availability or confidentiality.

The computer file hosts is an operating system file that maps hostnames to IP addresses. It is a plain text file. Originally a file named HOSTS.TXT was manually maintained and made available via file sharing by Stanford Research Institute for the ARPANET membership, containing the hostnames and address of hosts as contributed for inclusion by member organizations. The Domain Name System, first described in 1983 and implemented in 1984, automated the publication process and provided instantaneous and dynamic hostname resolution in the rapidly growing network. In modern operating systems, the hosts file remains an alternative name resolution mechanism, configurable often as part of facilities such as the Name Service Switch as either the primary method or as a fallback method.

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A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers. The goal is to provide high availability and performance by distributing the service spatially relative to end users. CDNs came into existence in the late 1990s as a means for alleviating the performance bottlenecks of the Internet as the Internet was starting to become a mission-critical medium for people and enterprises. Since then, CDNs have grown to serve a large portion of the Internet content today, including web objects, downloadable objects, applications, live streaming media, on-demand streaming media, and social media sites.

The domain name arpa is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. It is used predominantly for the management of technical network infrastructure. Prominent among such functions are the subdomains in-addr.arpa and ip6.arpa, which provide namespaces for reverse DNS lookup of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, respectively.

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This article presents a comparison of the features, platform support, and packaging of many independent implementations of Domain Name System (DNS) name server software.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fast flux</span> DNS evasion technique against origin server fingerprinting.

Fast flux is a domain name system (DNS) based evasion technique used by cyber criminals to hide phishing and malware delivery websites behind an ever-changing network of compromised hosts acting as reverse proxies to the backend botnet master—a bulletproof autonomous system. It can also refer to the combination of peer-to-peer networking, distributed command and control, web-based load balancing and proxy redirection used to make malware networks more resistant to discovery and counter-measures.

DNS hijacking, DNS poisoning, or DNS redirection is the practice of subverting the resolution of Domain Name System (DNS) queries. This can be achieved by malware that overrides a computer's TCP/IP configuration to point at a rogue DNS server under the control of an attacker, or through modifying the behaviour of a trusted DNS server so that it does not comply with internet standards.

Domain Name System blocking, or DNS blocking / filtering, is a strategy for making it difficult for users to locate specific domains or websites on the Internet. It was first introduced in 1997 as a means to block spam email from known malicious IP addresses.

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Originally designed by Google, the project is now maintained by a worldwide community of contributors, and the trademark is held by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

DNS over HTTPS (DoH) is a protocol for performing remote Domain Name System (DNS) resolution via the HTTPS protocol. A goal of the method is to increase user privacy and security by preventing eavesdropping and manipulation of DNS data by man-in-the-middle attacks by using the HTTPS protocol to encrypt the data between the DoH client and the DoH-based DNS resolver. By March 2018, Google and the Mozilla Foundation had started testing versions of DNS over HTTPS. In February 2020, Firefox switched to DNS over HTTPS by default for users in the United States. In May 2020, Chrome switched to DNS over HTTPS by default.

A domain controller (DC) is a server that responds to security authentication requests within a computer network domain. It is a network server that is responsible for allowing host access to domain resources. It authenticates users, stores user account information and enforces security policy for a domain. It is most commonly implemented in Microsoft Windows environments, where it is the centerpiece of the Windows Active Directory service. However, non-Windows domain controllers can be established via identity management software such as Samba and Red Hat FreeIPA.

References

  1. Compare: Anderson, Howard; Yull, Sharon; Hellingsworth, Bruce (2001). Higher National Computing (2 ed.). Oxford: Routledge (published 2004). p. 260. ISBN   9781136398988 . Retrieved 2015-08-18. A network domain is more formally defined as a group for servers controlled by a primary domain controller. The idea is that this group of servers can behave as a single combined unit.
  2. Compare: Chen, Lidong; Gong, Guang (29 May 2012). Communication System Security. Chapman & Hall/CRC Cryptography and Network Security Series. CRC Press (published 2012). p. 313. ISBN   9781439840368 . Retrieved 2015-08-18. The terminology, network domain, comes from the cellular systems. Traditionally, a cellular service provider owns not only radio frequency spectrums but also certain network infrastructure, for example, base stations, switches, and servers. All these entities are connected through wired network to provide telephony service. A network domain is the wired portion of an operator's network.
  3. Postel, J (October 1984). "RFC: 920 - Domain Requirements". Internet Engineering Task Force. Archived from the original on 12 January 2021. Retrieved 27 January 2019.
  4. Archiveddocs. "Planning DNS Servers". docs.microsoft.com. Archived from the original on 2019-01-28. Retrieved 2019-01-27.
  5. "Google Ngram Viewer". books.google.com. Retrieved 2019-01-27.
  6. Barnouw, Erik (1968-02-20). A History of Broadcasting in the United States: 2. The Golden Web: 1933-1953. OUP USA. ISBN   9780195004755. Archived from the original on 2022-01-18. Retrieved 2021-12-03.
  7. Chan, Kenneth Chi-Kin (1986). Integrating local area networks to improve reliability and performance (Thesis). University of British Columbia. Archived from the original on 2019-01-28. Retrieved 2019-01-27.