(1) See
URL,
IP address and
Internet domain name.
(2) There are two major types of addresses on the Internet. One is a person's email address, and the other is a website address, which is known as a URL. Following is an explanation of Internet email addresses only. For more on URLs, see
URL and
Internet domain name.
Email Address Format
The format for addressing a message to an Internet user is USER NAME @ DOMAIN NAME. For example, the address of the author of this database is
alan@computerlanguage.com. There are no spaces between any of the words. ALAN is the user name and COMPUTERLANGUAGE.COM is the domain name. The .COM stands for the commercial top-level domain category (see
Internet domain name). For the actual structure of an Internet address, see
IP address.
Get Your Own
Email addresses are obtained from an Internet service provider (ISP). You can generally choose any name for the first part of the address as long as it is not already taken. The second part is the ISP's domain name. However, if you change your service, your Internet address changes. To obtain a permanent email address, you can register your own domain name or you can use an email service. See
how to register a domain name and
email interfaces.
Find Someone Else's
There are websites that maintain directories, or white pages, of email addresses. New sites are coming online all the time. You may have to try several sites to find someone, and there is no guarantee. See
Web white pages and
Web Yellow pages.