What is the difference between .com, .org and .net?

Internet addresses are really just numbers like 123.456.789.012 (IP addresses) which are not very user friendly for humans to work with, but are ideal for digital computers to work with.

So the internet uses a system of “aliases” that are represent the IP address as a “uniform resource locator” (URL) like: shop.com , service-provider.net , and football.org .

the bit after the DOT is one of a number of hierarchies that group similar types of web site into each broad hierarchy.

.com is for “commercial” - profit making companies; .org is for non- profit organizations like clubs and charities; .net is for things that make the internet work like internet service providers.

When you put a web address into the address bar of your browser, the address is sent to a “domain name server” (DNS) that looks up the corresponding IP address (a bit like looking a telephone number up in a telephone directory if you know a person’s name and postal address).

The various hierarchies of domains like .com is just a practical solution to make the system work efficiently - a bit like libraries grouping similar types of books together so they are easier to find.

– Best wishes - Majikthise.

These are called “top level domains” The part in front of the top level domain is known as a second level domain. In example.com, .com is the top level domain and example is the second level domain.

The intent was that .com would be used for commercial organizations, .net for networking and network services, .edu for secondary education, .mil for US military, and several other less common ones with .org being a domain for organizations that do not fall into any other category. Add to this the 2 letter country domains.

There is little if any enforcement of who is in what domain. When I was an admin at an .edu our second level domain in the .com domain was an adult site leading to web surfers mistakenly going there instead my university. We did eventually get control of the other domain though. Due to problems like this many organizations end up buying up their second level domains in all of the common top level domains if nothing else to keep other people from buying them. e.g. if you company is example you would register example.com example.net and example.org to protect your corporate identity.

.org is run by a specific organization of any kind .com is either commercial reasons or company run like google and .net is run by a network or chain of networks

Thank you all so much for explaining, your answers sure helped a lot.