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Domain Name System (DNS)

What exactly happens when you enter a domain name in your web browser, how does the browser locate the website you need? There are millions of domain names on the Internet and though they are intelligible and easy to remember for us, they are not that well suited for computers as the numeric IP addresses. The Domain Name System, also called DNS is responsible for matching the domain names to the corresponding IP addresses, so when you are looking for a website and make a request from your browser, the Domain Name System helps you find the server hosting the website you want to access. This means that every time you type a domain name in your browser bar you are sending a request to a DNS server asking it for the IP address of that website or device (every device connected to the Internet has an IP address).

 

DNS Server

The Domain Name System is regularly compared to a phonebook that enables you to call for any website. However, with DNS the “phone numbers” and corresponding names are kept safe and accessible for anyone with internet connection on DNS servers (name servers). DNS servers are important, because every time you send a request to a website you’re not directly connected to it, but to a DNS server, which translates the website’s domain name into its IP address and then sends it to your computer, so you can finally reach the server that hosts the website using the IP address.

So, every time you visit a website, transfer files or send emails the DNS server looks up the domain name. You can avoid sending a request to the name server by writing the IP address directly into the browser. The IP of a website can be changed and one domain name may have a few IP addresses.

How Does The DNS Server Work?

There are two Internet namespaces(of domain names and IP addresses) that are coordinated by DNS servers. The name servers store the information for all existing domain names and their DNS records. In order for this huge database to work effectively, there are millions of interconnected DNS servers that distribute the requests among themselves.

So, when you make a DNS lookup request (want to visit a website, send an email, etc.) you contact a local DNS server asking it for the IP of the website. If that server has the information for the domain in its database it directly sends it back to you. If it doesn’t have the information in its database it asks another server or more if needed. When the server receives the information from another server it sends it back to you and caches it in case there is more request for that domain later.

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