Their old site had been sitting unchanged for SEVEN years and they had no way of updating it. We worked with Leah and Anita at Northland to incorporate an online catalog with ecommerce capabilities so customers can place orders online. We also added information about their equipment sales, rental and repair services capabilities as well as links to MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) documents for their cleaning chemical products.

We still have a a few more items to add to their catalog, but it’s a major improvement over their old site – and now they can update their own website whenever they want!

Her old site had been sitting unchanged for years and she had no way of updating it. We worked with Sharon to incorporate a new photo gallery of her design work (actually TWO photo galleries!) and information about her ASID and Green AP certifications into a new layout for her site. She wanted a new layout using earth tones that still had a touch of simple beauty to it. We still have a tweak or two to make, but it’s a major improvement over her old site – and now she can update her own website whenever she wants!

* Don’t fall in love with a product or service. You want to become a successful business owner; the product that gets you there is irrelevant (that is, unless you’re very passionate about something and don’t care about money as much as you care about doing something you love [which I completely believe in, BTW]).
* Find the market first and develop a product for them. Listen to them and give them what they want.
* Test the market as fast as you can with as little money as possible. Don’t create a perfect company and then launch it; launch it first and if it works, perfect it.

You can read the rest of his post on his blog: “The One Thing Smart Marketers Know that Dumb Ones Don’t“.

Enjoy!

David G.

However, we have come to depend on this technology so much that when it doesn’t work perfectly, we get annoyed, frustrated, and upset. Still we keep on using our favorite gadgets, buying more of them, upgrading them to get the latest and greatest new features, and committing more of our time, money, and life to them, believing that they’ll make our life easier, fuller, richer and overall better. But has that really happened?

Party Lines and Listening in on the Neighbors

It seems remarkable to think back to my childhood growing up in Butler County, PA. There was a time in the not-so-distant past when cell phones, satellite dishes, Tivos, iPods, iPhones, and the Internet DID NOT EXIST! (NOTE: Yes, we DID have indoor plumbing, although there were two outhouses back on my grandparents’ farm that were available if we needed to use them in an emergency.)

Our family had ONE telephone in the house – an ugly green (or was it “avocado”?) wall phone with a long cord that was owned by the local telephone company, who had firmly attached it to the kitchen wall …

… and our home phone was on an EIGHT-household party line!

We not only had to share the ONE family telephone with everyone else in our household, we also had to share it with EIGHT – count ‘em, EIGHT - other families in the neighborhood as well.  And they could pick up the phone and listen in on your conversations at any time – oh, the horror!

Call long-distance? Only in an emergency or for a special event! I can remember when my uncle, an enterprising young businessman, would arrive back home after a long drive across the state and would then make a person-to-person call to himself at my grandparents house. They’d hear his voice and refuse the call saying that he wasn’t there, knowing that he’d made the trip across the state and arrived back home safely. (A low-tech version of the later “phone phreaking” techniques that people used to steal phone service, I guess …)

Is It My Turn to Talk Yet?

I can remember that using the party-line telephone to make a call was something of an event. Proper party-line phone etiquette dictated that you would pick up the phone, listen to see if anyone else was on the line, then dial the five-digit local number you wanted to call.

If the party line were in use, you’d wait and check back again a few minutes later to see if it was available. If you waited still longer and tried a third time and the neighbors were STILL on the phone, you might interrupt your neighbor and ask them to conclude their conversation so you could make a call.

Usually, this involved some noise-making and throat-clearing and an “Excuse me, but I need to make an IMPORTANT call.”  (Of course, it must be important to interrupt the current conversation!)

Since we had to see these folks at church, the store, or on walks around the neighborhood, we considered it more important to maintain good relations with them than to get into a verbal spat over their use of the party line (unless they got obnoxious about it, which few ever did).

But even our patience and willingness to practice proper phone etiquette had its limits: when one neighbor was elected township supervisor and another one became the dog-catcher, my Mom called the phone company to complain about the constantly busy party line. She was rewarded by getting us switched to a FOUR-party line – what a triumph!

By the time I became a teenager in the late ‘60s, we had moved up to a semi-private line – just our family and my uncle and aunt next door sharing the same line – hey, now we’re talking!

(For technical details on how the old party lines actually worked, check out the question and answers here. I understand from talking to a phone technician friend of mine that our local telco handled party line phones by using different ringing voltage frequencies on either the “Tip” or “Ring” wires to make an individual home’s telephone ring when someone called their number.  Each phone had a corresponding ringer tuned to that frequency and connected to the correct wire.)

Communications R’ Us

Fast forward forty years or more. Most of us now have multiple wireless phones scattered around our house – and we complain if someone else in our household is hogging the line. Since we hate to wait to talk (or to be overheard by someone – except out in public!), most of us now have our own cell phones, and we can instant message, text message, picture message, page, post, tweet, comment on Facebook, and blog to our hearts content. We are wired – and un-wired – to the max, able to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time.

However, proper communications etiquette seems to have declined a great deal since the old party line days. We have to endure loudmouths yakking on their cell phones in restaurants and on public transportation. We all got so many phone call solicitations from various agencies and telemarketers interrupting our meals that Congress had to pass a law creating a “Do Not Call Registry” to let us get off their auto-dialer lists.

We also have computer viruses, worms, trojans, phishing, pharming, spam, spim (spam via instant messaging), denial of service attacks, security breaches, and wireless network snooping. But still we talk and blog and message on – and on, and on …

Who Ya Gonna Call?

Sometimes you have to wonder – is anybody really listening? Do we really have that much more to say now that’s worth saying compared to the old party-line days? If our self-worth was measured by our call or message  or texting volume, then we must be the richest people on earth!

Or do we just like to hear ourselves talk, see our words displayed online for others to read – or “flame” – on a web forum, and enjoy exchanging banter in chat rooms or via instant messaging or Twitter? It seems that the “party line” past has been replaced by the “online” present. Perhaps we really do enjoy the idea of furtively – or blatantly – getting in on someone else’s conversations!

Now if I could just figure out how to use that old long distance calling card that I bought 15 years ago; I’m sure it still has a bunch of minutes left on it!

If you work in a business where you use networked computer systems, you know what I’m talking about.  Various surveys have shown that the average corporate network user has to remember anywhere from five to 15 passwords!

That number doesn’t include all the userids & passwords for your personal use such as online banking, credit card accounts, airline frequent flyer clubs, hotel or other travel club memberships, business or trade group member sites, online shopping sites, insurance or investment sites, personal webmail, blogs, online forums, gaming sites, … YIKES!  How do you keep it all straight?

We don’ need no steenking Online Security …

One way some people deal with this jumble of userids and passwords is to simply use a familiar word for all their passwords like the name of their spouse, child, or pet, or maybe their birthdate, house or apartment number, etc.  A recent survey showed that the most commonly used password is … “password”!

Unfortunately, this is almost as bad as no security at all, and is just what a hacker is expecting. They can download ready-made “dictionary attack” lists full of the most common names and number combinations used as passwords, then setup an automated script to try them out and see which ones work.  It usually takes just a few minutes to guess such easy passwords.

Some Password Advice

So how do you create a secure password? Here are some basic dos and don’ts:

1) DON’T leave your passwords on a sticky note pasted to your monitor or in your top drawer – 60% of all security breaches are done by insiders (co-workers, friends, or family members), not outside hackers!

2) DON’T use current telephone numbers, social security numbers, or the names of family members or pets – it’s pretty easy to go online and find out all kinds of information about you, including your birthdate, your family members, your home address, your phone number, and so on.  And that adorable picture of your cocker spaniel, Molly, on your Facebook page is a clue to your potential password as well!

3) DON’T use the same password for everything – some userids and passwords would have minimal impact if someone else learns them (like for accessing a blog or forum), while others hold the key to your financial well-being.  Use a different password for those high-impact security areas.

4) DO use acronyms – it’s hard to guess or remember a password that is a jumble of letters or numbers, so try making up an acronym that you can remember like “Steelers Fans Are The Greatest” or “I Like Rolling Rock Beer.” Turn this into an acronym and it becomes “SFATG” or “ILRRB” – nonsensical words to anyone who doesn’t know what they stand for, and hard to crack via a “dictionary attack.”

5) DO add numbers or other non-alphabetic characters to your passwords – this makes them even harder to guess. For example, if the home where you grew up (not where you live now) was located at 227 Maple St., you could add the numbers 227 to your acronym letters and come up with a password like this: ILRRB227 – a password that you could remember but would be very hard to guess or crack, even with specialized “cracker” software!

6) DO change your passwords on a regular basis – preferably 3 to 4 times a year, especially for logins that grant access to your personal information or bank accounts.  Some sites that provide access to highly sensitive information may require you to do this anyhow.  If you’re using my “acronym + numbers” recommendation, at least switch the sequence of letters or numbers around so the numbers are first instead of last.  Or you could change the numeric part of the password to another easily remembered number: perhaps the 3-digit area code or exchange of your old home phone number, the route number of the highway that you used to drive to work, the last two digits of your spouse’s or parent’s birth year, etc.

Hopefully these suggestions will help you secure your online account access while not making remembering your passwords a part-time job!

So grab your sharpened virtual No. 2 pencil, and let’s get started!

Q1: You just received an email promising that if you’ll pass this message on to 10 of your friends, the email tracking software that Bill Gates has developed for Walt Disney Productions will be able to keep tabs on how many people get your email and forward it; if your message gets forwarded to enough people, you’ll win a free trip to Disney World!  Your response should be:

A)     Immediately click on the “Forward” button and send the message to everyone in your address book so you’ll accumulate the most points possible.

B)     Only send the message on to 10 people that you really care about – after all, the message did say that they could track your emails, so you don’t want to get caught breaking the rules!

C)    Start laughing hysterically that anyone would be dumb enough to believe that all forwarded emails could be tracked.

Q2: Which (if any) of the following stories that are being spread via email are true:

A)     A policeman from Ohio warns against the dangers of “Dust-Off” (compressed air in a can) because his teenage son died from “huffing” the vapors.

B)    A distraught mother writes that her 9-year-old girl, Penny Brown, has been missing now for two weeks, and includes a picture with her plea for help.

C)    Mister Rogers was actually a Navy Seal with numerous kills to his credit in Vietnam before he decided to devote his life to helping children.

D)    If you locked yourself out of your car, you can unlock your car by having someone else call your cell phone and send the “unlock” signal from your remote entry device to your cell phone held next to your car.

Q3: True or False: Your bank will send you an email if they’ve spotted suspicious activity with your account along with a link to their web site so you can confirm your account details.

Q4: True or False: A public cell phone directory is going to be published soon and if you don’t call the number setup by the FCC to put your cell phone on the Do Not Call list, you will start getting telemarketers calling your cell phone.

OK, class, pencils down!  Now let’s see how you did.

The correct answers are:

Q1: The CIA might be able to track ALL forwarded emails, but not Microsoft or Disney, so the answer is C).

Q2: All but A) are hoaxes.

Q3: This is FALSE – it’s a “phishing” email from someone who is trying to steal your account information!  (I’m sure that you got this one right.)

Q4: This is somewhat of a trick question: several major wireless phone providers (most of them except Verizon) announced their intention to establish a ‘411’ directory of customers’ cell phone numbers back in 2006; however, the numbers would only be made available with customer consent and only to those who dial directory assistance and pay a fee.  However, this service has never been implemented.  Yes, the FCC DOES allow you to put your cell number on the Do Not Call list if you want, but this is redundant since their regulations already block most telemarketing calls to cell phones (unless you have a business that lists a cell phone number for contact info). Also, once a phone number is listed in the DO NOT CALL directory, it will not “expire” and require you to renew it.

By the way, all of the above came from actual emails that I’ve received. To check out any suspicious emails or Internet stories, I’d recommend the following sites:

http://www.snopes.com/ (one of the first places I check when I get a message that sets off my “sniff alarm”)

http://urbanlegends.about.com/ (another good source of up-to-date info about questionable messages and the latest viruses and scams)

http://www.factcheck.org/ (mostly deals political issues and other stories that are “in the news”)

Surf safely!

You’ve seen and heard them all over the place – strings of characters, dots, and slashes like these:

www.netgreenconsulting.com

www.duq.edu

www.beaufort.usmc.mil

www.theregister.co.uk

Yes, they’re links to web sites for various businesses and organizations. But what do these jumbles of characters and symbols really mean?

URLs and You

For Internet users, these are known as Uniform Resource Locators or URLs. Type one into your browser’s “Address” field, press Enter, and voila!  You are magically transported to a web page for that business or organization. But how does this magic happen?

URLs rely on the Domain Name System that I wrote about in a previous article. These names are read from right-to-left, with each section separated by a period or “dot”.  Note that the URLs shown above end (or start if you’re reading right-to-left) with .com, .edu, .mil, and .uk. These are known as Top Level Domains or TLDs. Each TLD was initially created for a particular type of organization that connected to the original US Department of Defense ARPANET (the predecessor to the Internet). The original 6 TLDs were:

.com = commercial organizations and businesses

.edu = educational institutions such colleges and universities

.gov = US Federal government agencies

.mil = the US Military

.net = network and telecoms providers

.org = non-profit organizations

Masters of Their Own Domain

It used to be that a single domain registrar in the U.S., Network Solutions, managed all domain name assignments for the whole Internet. In 1999, this lucrative business was put out to bid, so now a slew of international domain registrars administer the various TLDs.

In addition, each country has a designated two-character TLD that they are responsible for, such as .us (United States), .ca (Canada), .uk (United Kingdom), .mx (Mexico), .de (Germany or “Deutschland), .it (Italia), etc.  Many of these country-specific domains also maintain sub-domains that mirror the American TLDs, such as “.co.uk” for commercial entities in the UK.

The reason for all this domain registration administration is pretty obvious: there can only be one “netgreenconsulting.com” or “duq.edu” (my graduate school alma mater, Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA) in the entire world. If domain names were not unique, our web browsers and email servers would get very confused!  (It would be like having two different “Maple Streets” in the same town or postal code.)

Once an organization has registered a domain name, they can create their own sub-domains if they want.  For example, the U.S. Marine Corps has created the “beaufort.usmc.mil” sub-domain so they can better maintain the Internet services specific to their Beaufort, SC, area bases and personnel (near where I live in the “Lowcountry” of South Carolina). Thus the URL www.beaufort.usmc.mil points to the World Wide Web (“www”) server for the Beaufort area USMC bases that are part of the US Military.

Similarly, The Register, an irreverent IT-focused online publication headquartered in the UK, has the URL www.theregister.co.uk for its web site.  This indicates that their corporate domain “theregister” is registered under the “commercial” sub-domain for the United Kingdom (co.uk).

With Liberty and Domains for All

Needless to say, as the Internet has grown, so has the competition for desirable domain names; over 82 million second-level domain names are currently registered!  (You can check the current statistics here: http://www.domaintools.com/internet-statistics/)

The original restrictions on what kind of organization can get a domain name in a particular TLD have evaporated, at least in the U.S.  I can now register a .com, .net, or .org domain for just about any business or organization that I want, and businesses often have to go with one of the alternative TLDs if someone else has the .com domain that they would like to have.

Several new TLDs have been added, including .biz for businesses, .aero for the aviation industry, .tv for online television or video services, .info for information services, .museum for museums, and .name for individuals. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the international organization that now has overall responsibility for Internet domains and IP addresses, is also considering proposals for new generic TLDs (currently 21 are in use) and internationalized domain names (domain names represented by local language characters such as Arabic, Russian or Chinese).

Hey, Buddy, Wanna Buy a Domain?

To register a domain name, you can contact any number of domain registry services such as www.networksolutions.com, www.godaddy.com, www.betterwhois.com, www.register.com, or the many country-specific domain registrars. Most ISPs can also register a domain name for you.  But don’t hesitate; if you find that a domain name that you want to use is available, register it as soon as possible, even if you won’t have a web site ready to use it for some time.  It’s worth spending the $10 – $20 per year to grab a good domain name before it’s gone. There’s always the off-chance that someone else may be genuinely interested in that domain name and may snap it up whilst you tarry (and I’ve seen it happen where a domain name that was available one afternoon was gone the next morning when a client tried to register it!)

I’ve also heard that some registrars allow “snooping” of domain name queries on their sites. A colleague of mine tested this out by going to a domain registrar web site (not one of those listed above) and doing a query of some nonsensical domain name that didn’t spell out anything recognizable. Within a few days, some “cybersquatter” had registered that domain name and sent him an email offering to sell it to him for twice the price it would have cost!

Also, be wary of dealing with ISPs or web hosting companies that offer to register a domain name for you.  Make sure that they register it in YOUR name with YOUR administrative contact info, not theirs, if at all possible; or if they will only register it under their business on your behalf, make sure they don’t lock the domain registration down with no way for you to move it to another provider in the future.  I’ve seen domain names lost by clients who didn’t get the domain expiration notice email because it went to their old web hosting company instead of to their email address. (And don’t forget to update your contact info if it changes!)

A final story: I was working with a Thai restaurant in the US that was negotiating with a web developer in Thailand. This web developer bought the .com domain that they wanted to use and then offered to sell it to them for $600!  Meanwhile, they had already put that domain name on letterhead and business materials in anticipation of registering it. Talk about a nasty international dispute!

David G.

Thanks to all who responded to my “Response” – I had hoped to get some thoughtful feedback (and not flamed!), and you all came through admirably. Congratulations on your respectful, well-reasoned responses!

I agree with all those who say “keep it simple for the newbies.” And if you’re relying on article marketing as your primary source of business leads for both new customers and new distributors, then trying to promote more than a couple of products certainly can complicate your writing schedule and water down your results. (And I’m not sure how “newbies” can use that technique …)

But remember – we’re in the business of providing SOLUTIONS, not selling products or a business opportunity.

• The guy with aches and pains in their joints after they golf isn’t looking for a product – they want a solution to take their pain away.
• The lady whose makeup never quite matches her skin color, leaving her with makeup lines on her neck, doesn’t want to buy a product – she wants to look attractive.
• The couple who are both working outside the home, yet are falling behind on their bills and wondering how they’ll put their kids through college isn’t looking for a business – they want a way to overcome their financial struggles and spend more time with their kids.
• The small business owner who is struggling to maintain and grow his business doesn’t really want to pay someone to build a website – he wants to attract more paying customers so he can make more money.

They want a SOLUTION to their pain and struggles! Not a product or business opportunity!

What if I could just tell the golfer that, instead of going to a nutrition store and hoping that the teenage clerk can give him advice on what will help ease his pains, I could instead say, “I’m not an expert on this, but some really smart scientists and programmers have put together an online survey that asks all about your health and lifestyle issues, then recommends specific customized products that will be the most helpful to making you feel better”?

What if I could tell the lady who wants to look better, “I’m not an expert at this, but I have a partner who specializes in making custom blend foundations that make you look great – would you like me to arrange a makeover appointment with her?”

What if could tell the couple with financial struggles, “I’ve found a way to save money buying things I need on the Internet – in fact, I can even make money by recommending that other folks save money on the Internet. Would you be interested in checking that out?”

And what if I could tell the struggling small business owner, “I’m not an expert on this, but I work with a company that has a whole staff of people who design websites for small businesses that want to leverage the Internet to grow their sales; can I setup a time for you to talk with a web specialist about this?”

Having a variety of ways to provide solutions lets me become more than a salesperson – I become a resource and advisor to those who need help. Sure, I want to start off in just one area or one product line or even a single product, but if I can get training and grow my expertise in my area of specialization while also being aware of other products or services that are available (and I also have others on my team who can provide advice in their area of specialization), I can help a whole lot more people by providing them a SOLUTION to what they NEED, not just try to sell them the one product that I have.

“Well, everybody needs my product (or service).”

Maybe. But not everybody wants your product or is interested in your product or even is willing to listen to you talk about your product. They’re interested in THEMSELVES: their problems, their worries, their pains. Not my products, services, or business opportunity.

Establishing a relationship with them – either by writing and posting articles (I’m not sure how “newbies” will come up with the good copywriting skills needed for this) or in person (yes, good listening skills and the “FEEL, FELT, FOUND” technique can be very useful here) – and having a variety of simple solutions to offer (see the above examples) expands the number of people that I can help – and who will become customers as well as partners to grow my business!

Again, thanks for all the responses. Keep moving forward!

David G.

Basically, Mike said that it was better to go with a “single product” type of Network Marketing or Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) company vs. a business with multiple product lines.  His main point was that, in his experience, this created less confusion and more focus and duplication for new distributors, resulting in building a network marketing business faster.  Here’s an excerpt:

“Having a single product based line was advantageous in many ways…

It created PERFECT focus and momentum throughout the company because every single distributor, was dealing with the same product.

Think of it as a bandwagon effect.

All of the conference calls, all of the tools, all of the websites, and all of the training were about one single product.

New distributors didn’t join and say, “So which products should I promote”, or “Which tools should I buy?”

Every distributor and every team was on the same page. This laser-like focus produced incredible results.

Having too many options creates fragmentation throughout the distributor force, with various teams using different methods, and tools to promote different products.
This creates confusion and doubt for new distributors who can’t help but wonder if there’s a better way being used by another team.

Focus is destroyed.

…

The fewer the number of options, the more focus…

The more focus, the better the results…

Mike, I beg to differ.

I see your “single product companies are better” viewpoint as quite short-sighted.  There are only so many people in your circle of influence (whether you reach them face-to-face or via PPC ads) who are willing to buy some “miracle juice” product as you described in your message; once you’ve reached them, you can no longer expand your market without additional products.  In fact, you’re likely to start seeing both your organization and your product sales SHRINK after a while as customer slow or discontinue their purchases – assuming that the company stays in business for more than a few years!

Sure, you might get a big surge of sales as the company/product first hits the market (as you’ve illustrated).  But are you building a business that will still be going strong 5 or 10 or even 20 years from now?

(Yes, I do think long-term when looking at a distribution business.  One of my senior partners inherited the  network marketing business from her Dad when he passed away – and she and her husband are now making >$25K per month from it!)

If you are building a business for the long term, putting all your eggs in one product basket is a recipe for failure in my view, especially if your network marketing company manufactures the product(s) that they sell.  What happens if some component or ingredient of that product is in short supply (due to economic, political, competitive or weather-related issues)?

Or what if the FDA steps in and outlaws the sale of a key ingredient?  (Remember all the weight-loss products with ephedra?  GONE!)

Or what if the FTC shuts down the company’s sales of that product or service due to false or misleading claims being made about its benefits?  Boom – you’re out of business – and your wonderful new single-product company is sitting on a bunch of aging product ingredients in a shuttered manufacturing facility!

Mike, I DO agree with your recommendation to give new distributors limited choices as part of their sign-up process: “Here’s what you need to do to be successful.”  But I think it’s better to have multiple market options and steer people into a “major” – a specific product line or market area that they’re interested in – then have them concentrate on the top-selling products in that product line first.  Otherwise, you’re trying to fit everyone into the same “tell all your friends and family about the benefits of our one and only amazing product” sales & marketing funnel.

I have no interest in cosmetics, for example, yet thousands of people in my company concentrate on that market and do very well at it.  Others love the weight loss program or health and nutrition products and focus their efforts there.  More markets, more interested prospects, and more distributor retention – and long term growth despite economic upheavals.

Every successful business I can think of would rather expand share of customer – sell more products to their existing customer base – than fight with other businesses to gain market share (more customers in the same market), to wit:

• Why did FedEx buy Kinkos?
• Why did UPS buy Mail Boxes Etc.?
• Why did Arby’s add chicken sandwiches and salads to their menu?
• Why did Microsoft expand from selling DOS and Windows into selling Office productivity applications – and then expand into the Internet and web search applications?  (Bing!)

Because that’s what their customers also wanted; they saw the need in the market and found the products and services to meet it – mostly by partnering with or buying up companies that provided the products that their customers were already looking for and purchasing.

Mike, you teach about developing a “You, Inc.” business strategy – a LONG-TERM strategy centered around developing YOUR OWN CUSTOMERS, not focused on a single network marketing company. That’s why you’ve developed multiple products yourself – Magnetic Sponsoring, Black Belt Recruiting, MLM Traffic Formula, etc. – so you can leverage your customer base to sell more products to your existing customers while also attracting new customers via affiliates and Internet marketing.  So why are you recommending a SHORT TERM, single product company approach to network marketing?  Why not follow a LONG TERM strategy and partner with a company that moves with the marketplace, expands into markets where the demand already exists, and leverages the Internet to market and sell all sorts of products that are in demand?

It seems like you’re contradicting your own business principles – unless you also recommend joining multiple companies at the same time to sell different products into other markets and expand your sales volume.  Sounds like a recipe for confusion to me – and as Eric Worre of Network Marketing Pro recently said, “Pick a Horse” and ride it!

David G.

Nope, it’s not a business name, address or phone number. But it’s becoming even more important than those identifying pieces of information to many of us.

It’s an Internet domain name. You know, all the “yaddayadda-dot-coms” that have become part of our daily lives.  (There’s a local auto dealer that I’d like to strangle every time I see his commercial and hear him loudly close with his website address, emphasizing the DOT COM – really, is the fact that he has a website the most important thing he has to tell us?)

You probably have one with your own identifier attached to it: your e-mail address, as in suzieq@mynetwork.com. Or maybe your business, church, organization, or even your family has a domain name so you can better serve your customers or members, as well as attract new ones, via the Internet.  Many online entrepreneurs have basically built their business around their domain name and the latest web technology.

Remember the Name

Why do we need domain names?  Basically, they function as virtual pointers to the real IP (Internet Protocol) addresses of devices that are connected to the Internet.

The reason that domain names were invented is pretty simple: we humans find it much easier to remember names than numbers, especially complex ones like IP addresses. This is why you’ll usually hear a business’ phone number three times in a radio or TV commercial but may only hear their Web site address once – if at all.

Computers, on the other hand, see everything as a string of ones and zeroes, so they work best with numbers. Names have no personal meaning or emotional attachment to them like they do for us humans.

For example, I can execute the DOS command ping www.wordpress.org on my PC and find out that this domain name actually points to the IP address of 72.233.56.138 – one of those “dotted decimal” addresses assigned to computers on the Internet.  In this case, it’s the IP address of the server where the main WordPress website resides.  By knowing this set of numbers, my PC can send out packets of information to that IP address and know that it will get to the correct destination.

The Domain Name System

Back in the early days of the US Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), there were few computers connected to what would eventually evolve into “The Internet.” But even then, the researchers using this experimental network found it much easier to remember and use names than IP or physical addresses.

Soon, an official list of system names and matching IP addresses began to be compiled – sort of an “ARPANET white pages directory” – and multiple strategically placed servers kept copies of this database available for lookups. This distributed names-to-numbers directory system became so popular that it was formally adopted as the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS).

DNS is still one of the technological foundations for our e-mail, Web surfing, game-playing, online shopping, and other Internet-based traffic going all around the world. If you’ve ever experienced problems with accessing DNS servers, you’ll know it quickly when these applications fail to connect to other systems because the domain name can’t be found and matched to its IP address!

So the next time you hear or see an Internet domain name in an ad, remember – it’s being provided because you’re a human, not a computer!