A domain name is a unique identifier for an entity or organization within the vastness of the Internet. It is typically used by web servers to identify and differentiate websites from one another, and it takes the form of a combination of letters, numbers, and other characters followed by a top-level domain (TLD) suffix. For example, www.example.com would be the domain name for the website at this URL, with “example” being the chosen label for the site, and “.com” denoting its TLD. A related but distinct term is IP address, which can refer to any device connected to a network such as the Internet and is used to facilitate communication between two or more computers through packets of data sent back and forth between them. An IP address consists solely of numbers separated by periods (e.g., 192.168.0.1) and is much less visually recognizable than a domain name; however, it has become increasingly common practice to assign domains to IP addresses in order to make them easier to remember and access in an effort known as Domain Name System (DNS). The combination of these two components (the domain name/label along with its TLD) allows users anywhere in the world to access websites without having to remember long strings of numbers—as would be necessary with just an IP address alone— making for fast, efficient navigation on the World Wide Web.
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