Canadian Domain Name FAQ
(Frequently Asked Questions)
This dot-ca Canadian domain name and web hosting FAQ is designed to help you learn more about .ca domain name registration. To keep your Canadian domain costs down, please read the following questions and answers before contacting our Canadian domain registration Support Team.
- Why can't I log in to change my DNS information?
- I changed my email address on record, how do I change it on the domain name registration record?
- I lost my CIRA user id and password information, where can I get this information?
- I lost my DOMAINSunder user id and password login information, where I can retrieve this information?
- What is the Manual Change of Administrative Contact (MCAC) process?
- How can I consolidate Canadian domain names that are under different Registrants under one Registrant?
- We have lots of domain names and do not wnat to deal with multiple domain name registration approvals for domain changes, can you help?
- When I register a domain, do I need to change the domain name server (DNS) field?
- Do I need to fill in an IP address?
- Why can't I go back when I select the back button?
- Is "www" part of my domain name?
- What is a name server?
- What is a primary and secondary name server?
- What is an IP address?
- What is DNS?
- What is delegation?
- What is propagation?
- Why can't I log in to change my DNS information?
- I changed my email address on record, how do I change it on the domain name registration record?
- I lost my CIRA user id and password information, where can I get this information?
- I lost my DOMAINSunder user id and password login information, where I can retrieve this information?
- What is the Manual Change of Administrative Contact (MCAC) process?
- How can I consolidate Canadian domain names that are under different Registrants under one Registrant?
- We have lots of domain names and do not wnat to deal with multiple domain name registration approvals for domain changes, can you help?
- When I register a domain, do I need to change the domain name server (DNS) field?
- Do I need to fill in an IP address?
- Why can't I go back when I select the back button?
- Is "www" part of my domain name?
- What is a name server?
- What is a primary and secondary name server?
- What is an IP address?
- What is DNS?
- A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) that looks like: http://www.compeng.net
- An IP Address (Internet Protocol Address) that looks like:161.184.138.36
- What is delegation?
- What is propagation?
Log onto DOMAINSunder Canadian Domain Registration Control Panel to manage your Canadian Domain Registration. The link is located on the side-navigation on the home, register domain and support pages, and is labelled "Login to Manage your Canadian Domain Registration". Please use your private DOMAINSunder username and password to log into the system.
Once you've logged into our secure management system, you will be able to modify your DNS information for any of the domains that you have registered with us. In addition to making DNS information changes, you can also change your other registrant and domain name related information easily and at your own convenience.
If you have forgotten or lost your DOMAINSunder username/password, please contact us toll-free 1-877-968-7626 or 1-877-807-0777 so that we may re-assign a new password for you.
Simply send us an email, and we will make the change. We will do some background checks as well to make sure that your request is comming from you and not an imposter.
After we make the change, you will have to log onto CIRA at https://www.cira.ca/cira/registrants to approve the change.
Approve the change means going to the CIRA website, and logging in to approve a change. During these types of processes there is usually a time limit of 72 Hours to 7 days, and if the user (you) does not go to the CIRA website to log in with your private userid and password within the time limit, then the "approval" is dropped.
If you do not have your CIRA userid and password, we can still do a change using the MCAC (Canadian domain registration manual change request) technique. This process also requires approval. Confirmation of this change request will be sent to your email. Please follow the instructions sent by CIRA exactly to make the approval.
If you have lost your CIRA login information, log into DOMAINSunder's Canadian domain registration manager from the left navigation on DOMAINSunder's home page. In the Canadian domain registration manager area, you will be able to send the CIRA login information to the Administrative Contact email.
If you do not have your DOMAINSunder login information, please contact our Support Team. Your DOMAINSunder domain registration login information will be sent to the Administrative Contact's email that is registered with your domain name registration.
However, if the domain name registration Administrative Contact email on record is inactive, you may need to complete the CIRA Manual Change of Administrative Contact (MCAC) to retrieve this information. Please refer to the MCAC information page.
The DOMAINSunder login information allows you to manage your domain name registration conveniently.
Please contact our Canadian domain name registration Support Team to request for a new password. Your DOMAINSunder login information will be sent to the domain registration Administrative Contact's email.
For more information on CIRA's MCAC procedures, please refer to our MCAC information page.
To merge two Canadian domain Registrant account under one Registrant account, please consult our information page on Registrant Mergers to see if the process is suitable for your domain registration needs.
The only time that you need to do approvals is for critical changes and transfers. Critical changes do not include DNS nameserver changes. If you use our "Express Login" when you register more than one domain name, then your domain will be under one domain registrant. If you would like to consolidate your existing domains, you can transfer to us and then we can merge all your domains to one registrant.
No, DOMAINSunder will not activate your domain hosting until you have paid for domain hosting. If you decide to host with someone else, then we will change your domain name servers at no extra charge. If you are unsure, just leave our default values in the nameserver fields and it will have no effect on your domain.
No, only fill in that field if your nameserver is the in the same domain as the one you are registering. eg. if you are registering joeblow.ca, and a nameserver is ns1.joeblow.ca, then fill in the IP address too.
We have made it possible to, for example, to check out some prices in the middle of a registration without destroying the form that you are working on. To do this, we open a new browser window whenever you select a new menu item during the registration process. When using Microsoft windows, to go back to your registration, you can hold down the "ALT" then press the "TAB" key to switch to old, or other windows. On a MAC, select the window from the Window menu in your browser to go back. You can also close the new window, and your registration will appear again.
During registration, pressing the back button will confuse the application, and you will have to start over. This is a common problem in html forms, and we are continually looking for a cost effective solution.
No. "www" is only a hostname within your domain usually used to signify where your web page is located.
Let's pretend that a domain name is a book in a library. How do you find out which shelf to go to so that you can get the book you want? You ask the librarian. Name servers are like librarians; they hold and seek out information about where to locate a particular domain name in the biggest of all libraries, the Internet.
Computers only recognise and find each other via a set of numbers called IP addresses (example 161.184.138.36). For a computer to find a web site on the Internet, a domain name such as compeng.net needs to be translated into a numerical IP address and vice versa. The computers that perform these translations are called name servers.
Hence for a domain name to function and point to your web site, it first needs to be configured so that it points to a name server. The name server will then have information about where the files for the web site are stored and will "guide" the web browser to the location of your home page.
Name servers are sometimes also referred to as Domain Name Servers (DNS) and as host machines.
Imagine if you wanted to find a book in a library - you ask a librarian for assistance but he can't help you because he is too busy helping someone else. You would then go to another librarian and ask her for assistance because she is not so busy. You could consider the first librarian as a primary name server and the second librarian as a secondary name server.
Domain names would still work with only one name server but the requirement to have at least 2 name servers has become a protocol (accepted standard) across the Internet. This is a back-up system so that if the primary name server is too busy or for some reason is unable to answer queries about a particular domain name, the secondary name server will be able to answer the queries instead.
The information stored about a domain name on the primary and secondary name servers is exactly the same. The primary name server acts as a master and the secondary name server periodically updates information from the primary server.
An IP address is similar to the reference numbers used to categorise books in a library. You might know the title of a book but to find it in the library, you need to look up its reference number so that you can find it amongst the shelves.
An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a set of four numbers separated by dots, and will look like this: 203.23.56.166. Each one of these numbers can be between 0 and 255. For a computer to be able to be found by other computers on the Internet it must have its own, unique IP address. However, with the introduction of the Domain Name System, people could connect to other computers on the Internet using an easy to remember name instead of an IP address. So in effect, for a domain name to function correctly, it must have a matching IP address.
For example, the domain name "compeng.net" has a matching IP Address 161.184.138.36. It's just much simpler to remember compeng.net than 161.184.138.36.
DNS is an acronym for Domain Name System. In many ways the domain name system acts like a map for the Internet. Like a map, the DNS uses addresses to find particular locations on the Internet.
These locations can be described in 2 ways:
For these locations to make sense to computers and for the computers on the Internet to find each other, they need to have a copy of that map. If you are using a map, which describes your local state, or suburb and you are only travelling within that area you are fine; but what happens when you go into another country? You need to get a new map that has details about that area.
If you wanted to travel around the whole world you would need maps of every single country, suburb, street and house - this would be very impractical because of the amount of information you would need to hold in one map. A better method of finding your way around would be to have one specific map for each area and when you enter a different area simply ask a local person for directions or get a new map of the local streets and houses.
The Domain Name System operates in much the same way - instead of every address of every computer, file and website being stored in one giant map, information is stored in different places all over the world. This idea is commonly referred to as a distributed database.
Just like the legends you see on maps, DNS has a set of standard methods for referring to particular types of locations on the Internet. For example, in the URL above, http that stands for hyper text transfer protocol is the type of communication protocol (rules) used and www stands for World Wide Web. The compeng.net section of the example indicates that within the [.net] domain space (network) there is a location called [compeng] and there is a file called index.html that contains the information for the web page.
Delegation is the process of making your domain name point to a particular computer on the Internet. Computers that hold information about domain names are called name servers (also referred to as host names).
For example, the domain name domainsunder.ca points to (is delegated to) 2 computers or name servers called, dns1.compeng.net and dns2.compeng.net.
When you type http://www.compeng.net into your browser, a query is sent out to the Internet asking for directions to the site. The directions that get returned will include information about where to find the primary name server called dns1.compeng.net and if that computer is not available then directions are provided for a secondary (back up) name server called dns2.compeng.net.
Propagation is the process of updated and new information being transferred across all of the name servers on the Internet. When hosting-details for a domain name are changed, compeng.net enacts the changes in real time with the NSI Registry. These details then need to be copied from name server to name server around the world until finally all of the name servers in the world have the latest copy of the information for the domain name. This process usually takes between 24 and 48 hours from the time that the initial changes are requested through our web site.
The change of details is entered into a database called the root zone file, and the new zone file (including your changes) takes time to propagate around the Internet. The root zone for multilingual domain names is maintained and administered by I-DNS International.
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