It isn't really as complex as it may seem, but DNS can be quite confusing for a non-technical person. For starters, imagine an index of books in a library to help you select the books you need or a telephone directory to look up phone numbers. The Domain Name System or DNS essentially performs a similar function to help servers from around the world to find your website when someone is looking for it.
To understand DNS, it is important to first understand what a domain IP address is, what are domain names and how both of these work.
Domain IP Addresses: All websites are recognized by a unique string of one, two or three numbers separated by dots. This is called the IP address of the website and looks something like this: 123.456.78.00. But usually are not in number sequence.
When you register and host your website, a unique IP address is assigned to it and servers recognize your website only by its IP address.
Domain Name: Now, can you imagine remembering a string of numbers for every website just because that is how a website is recognized? An IP address isn't easy to remember, people are more likely to mistype numbers and it also does not allow you to associate your company name, branding or the industry you belong to in your IP address. This is why we have domain names. A domain name usually has two parts - the name and the extension, separated by a dot. YourSite.Com is an example of a domain name.
DNS and its role: While domain names are easy to understand and remember, computers and servers on the internet cannot understand them. The DNS acts like a translator translating domain names to IP addresses and vice versa. It does the job of the telephone directory or the index of books helping computers and servers on the internet find the IP address of the domain name someone tries to access.
If you were to change the server where your website is hosted, it would be similar to a change of address in the real world. With the DNS, you do not need to inform anyone that your website now has a new server. Updating its IP addresses is all that is needed. People can continue to use your domain name and do not even need to know that it is now on a different server.
Uses of the DNS:
A DNS server stores the information about IP addresses and their corresponding domain names and does the translation when a domain name is requested. The DNS is essential for finding websites and is integral to the working of the internet as we know it today.
The domain name itself is located within the Domain Name System (DNS), which is a hierarchical system used to translate human-readable domain names into IP addresses that computers use to identify each other on the network. The DNS is distributed across numerous servers worldwide, with root servers at the top level, followed by TLD (top-level domain) servers, and authoritative name servers for individual domains. When you enter a domain name into a browser, your request is processed through these servers to locate the corresponding IP address.
Domain name queries are handled by the DNS Servers. The most popular DNS server software is BIND 9.
IP addresses, DNS database, Name Servers, and the Domain Name Space.
establishes a set of name server records in the DNS servers of the parent domain, indicating the IP addresses of DNS servers that are authoritative for the domain.
IP addresses, DNS database, Name Servers, and the Domain Name Space.
Domain name servers or systems converts the domain names entered by the users on web browsers into Ip addresses.
Mr. Paul Mockapetris invented the Domain Name System in 1983 and wrote the first implementation.
When you enter any website address, your internet provider views the DNS associated with the domain name or resolve the name into IP address and just connected to the domain server.
DNS translates a domain name into an access IP. Every website is hosted on an IP, the DNS servers tell your computer where a particular domain is hosted.
A conditional forwarder will forward DNS queries to different servers based on domain name.
It is a web interface which allows a domain registration holder to manage the account. This is commonly called as CPanel. This helps to mange the name servers, domain contacts, password for the registered domain and the renewal status of domain.
False. Domain Name System (DNS) servers do not maintain a complete list of all domain names and their corresponding IP addresses. Instead, they store records for specific domains and rely on a hierarchical structure and a distributed model to resolve names through various servers across the internet. This means that no single DNS server holds all domain name information.