Discuss your answers to the questions about Hands on #5( with questions in separate paragraphs): (1) Why do companies pay thousands of dollars for the rights to use a domain name? (2) Why do you think a company would want more than one IP address assigned to a single name? (3) One or more of the names on your list correspond to the same IP address, but when you type those names into your web browser, you see different pages. Why would more than one name be assigned to a single address?

(1) Why do companies pay thousands of dollars for the rights to use a domain name?

Companies have multiple reasons for choosing an expensive domain name. For one, the domain name allows for easy connectivity to a company’s brand. Next, it makes marketing cheaper due to it being a short and more memorable name that can bring in more users. Finally, by being an expensive name, its exclusivity further increases traffic by separating a company’s likelihood of being searched compared to other ones that have a similar product.

(2) Why do you think a company would want more than one IP address assigned to a single name?

Companies choosing to have multiple IP addresses to a single domain name primarily help with the back-end and scale of the business. The immediate reason for multiple IP addresses is redundancy; if there’s traffic across multiple servers and if one goes down, operations can continue. If a company is spread across long distances, then it can also help to have multiple IP addresses to have operations run smoothly regardless. A final reason would be load balancing to prevent any of the individual servers of a company from being overloaded if large amounts of traffic is common.

(3) One or more of the names on your list correspond to the same IP address, but when you type those names into your web browser, you see different pages. Why would more than one name be assigned to a single address.

Having multiple names tied to the same IP address is the result of virtual hosting. This process allows multiple names or websites to be on one server with a single address to reduce the amount of required physical resources compared to dedicated servers. It provides a cost-effective approach to companies that have multiple websites or reduces the costs for smaller business.