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Academic Research Questions? Last Updated April 23, 2008 |
Glossary - Also see the FAQ Domain Name = A unique identifier used for accessing computers on the Internet., e.g. yahoo.com or chapters.ca. In many ways domain names are one of the most basic building blocks of the commercial Internet. Although actual data packets are routed by computers according to IP addresses, these numbers, e.g., 169.229.39.137, are hard for human beings to remember. The domain name system was developed so that users could use the Internet address www-dcrp.ced.berkeley.edu rather than its numeric equivalent. Domain Name Specialization Ratio = A technique
which indicates the extent to which a region is specialized in domain names compared to
the United States as a whole. A value greater than 1.00 indicates a higher specialization
than the national average and a value less than 1.00 indicates a lack of specialization.
The formula used for this figure is as follows: Top Level Domain (TLD) = The rightmost characters in a domain name, e.g. .com or .ca. The most widely used top level domain is .com but close to 300 top level domains exist on the Internet. In general, each top level domain is administered separately although .com, .org, .net and .edu are administered through the same system. Registration Information for CONE Domain Names = Registration address for domain names contains contact information for a particular CONE domain. Included in this information is a mailing address, administrative and technical contact names with phone numbers and emails, the date the domain name was registered, the last time it was updated, and the name servers responsible for the domain. Although there is no guarantee that the registration addresses for a domain name and the location of Internet content production is the same, an analysis using the CorpTech database shows a strong correlation between the two. See explanation below.Internet Hosts = A standard indicator used by many studies of the growth and spread of the Internet. Although there is a great deal of variation between hosts ranging from a single desktop computer to powerful servers acting as multiple "virtual" hosts, this measure gives a rough indicator of the minimum size of the Internet. While this provides a valuable metric of growth over time, it is not a straightforward process to assign these Internet hosts to geographic locations particularly at the subnational level. In fact, the main source of these data, the Internet Software Consortium (ISC), is quite upfront about the limitations of these data. "There is not necessarily any correlation between a host's domain name and where it is actually located. A host with a .NL domain name could easily be located in the U.S. or any other country. In addition, hosts under domains EDU/ORG/NET/COM/INT could be located anywhere. There is no way to determine where a host is without asking its administrator." (ISC, 1999) gTLD = Generic top level domain. An abbreviation for .com, .org, .net and .edu domains. ccTLD = Country code top level domain. An abbreviation for Country Code domains, .e.g. .ca for Canada, .uk for the United Kingdom, etc. biTLD = biz and info top level domain. An abbreviation for .biz and .info domains.
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