NXDOMAIN
This is a game, and the game needs JavaScript — but the story it tells
is true, so here is the short version.
A domain name starts as nothing: ask the internet about it and every
resolver says NXDOMAIN — no such name. To become real it is
registered at a registrar (the retail counter — the
company you pay), which files it with a registry (the
wholesale ledger — Verisign keeps .com, DENIC keeps .de). They speak a
protocol called EPP to each other: XML over TLS,
check, create, renew.
Registration alone changes nothing you can visit. The name must be
delegated — NS records at the TLD pointing to its
nameservers — and then given an address record. Only
then does a resolver's walk (root servers → TLD servers → authoritative
nameserver) end in an answer instead of a shrug.
And every year the registration must be renewed, or the name slides
through expiry, grace, redemption, and the drop — where it is caught,
at the millisecond of release, by someone else.
Turn JavaScript on to walk a name through all of it yourself.
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