What is DNS?
The Domain Name System is a hierarchical and decentralized naming system for computers, services, or other resources connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities.
How does DNS work?
The process of DNS resolution involves converting a hostname (such as www.example.com) into a computer-friendly IP address (such as 192.168.1.1). An IP address is given to each device on the Internet, and that address is necessary to find the appropriate Internet device – like a street address is used to find a particular home. When a user wants to load a webpage, a translation must occur between what a user types into their web browser (example.com) and the machine-friendly address necessary to locate the example.com webpage.
Get Specific
In order to understand the process behind the DNS resolution, it’s important to learn about the different hardware components a DNS query must pass between. For the web browser, the DNS lookup occurs “ behind the scenes” and requires no interaction from the user’s computer apart from the initial request.
The domain name system (DNS) connects URLs with their IP address. With DNS, it’s possible to type words instead of a string of numbers into a browser, allowing people to search for websites and send emails using familiar names. When you search for a domain name in a browser, it sends a query over the internet to match the domain with its corresponding IP. Once located, it uses the IP to retrieve the website’s content. Most impressively, this whole process takes just milliseconds.
Think about what the user is going to type
Matt Cutts
