It's a shame that the early Internet pioneers didn't describe an Internet address in plain terms. Thinking as network professionals, they came up with the term "domain names" that enabled users to type in an address such as www.amazon.com to find a website. Unfortunately, this confuses generations of people who are comfortable with much more English-like labels such as "phone number" and "street address". For simplicity's sake, when your technical friends mention the phrase domain name or uniform resource locator (URL), translate that gibberish to "Internet address."

How do domain names or Internet addresses work? The secret lies in computers called domain name servers, essentially huge indexes, that maintain current lists matching Internet addresses to the physical location of the computers hosting the website that you want to visit.

Let's take a look at the different parts of an Internet address. We often see something that looks like this: www.ibm.com or http://www.ibm.com. The first part, www, is a protocol that specifies that you will be looking at a graphical website as opposed to transferring files (FTP) or using other Internet tools. If the Internet address is preceded by http://, don't be alarmed – http:// just indicates that the following Internet address supports the Internet standard defining the exchange of information on the web.

Our Internet address is www.baywalk.com or Baywalk.com. For brevity's sake, most people often drop the "www" preceding the organization name, but it's implicit. If someone says Yahoo.com, that is the same as www.yahoo.com.

The second part of the name is the organization itself. Your first guess is likely to lead you to the organization's website. It makes no sense for a company to create a website with an Internet address like www.you-will-never-remember-this.com. If I'm looking for Kodak or Apple, then www.kodak.com or www.apple.com are good guesses that lead to those organizations' websites. If you can't find the organization based on this, then try using a search engine like those from Google or Ask.com.

Finally, the third part of the name describes the type of organization in which the computer is located. Inside the United States, this last part of the domain name is called the top-level or high-level domain name. Here is a key to some important high-level domains that you will see on the Internet.

Outside the United States, the top-level domain indicates the name of the country in which the computer is located. Some examples of international domains: .uk United Kingdom, .fr France, and .ca Canada. A proposal to expand top-level domains has been discussed, and new options may be created in the future such as .store (electronic shopping), .arts (museums and culture), .rec (recreational sites), .info (information services) and .nom (for individuals).