Domain Name Servers, which is also known as DNS, can simply be defined as a phone book equivalent of the Internet. In other words, the responsibility of a domain name server is to maintain a directory of domain names and then translate stored information into IP addresses. That’s because people can easily remember the domain name instead of the IP address and they would find it as an easy task to visit the websites. For example, when you type a specific URL on your internet browser, your computer or mobile device would use a DNS in order to retrieve the relevant IP address attached to the domain. In other words, you will not be able to visit a website, unless you don’t know the IP address, without DNS.
Now you have a basic understanding about what DNS it and why it is important. It is also better to get to know about the technology behind it. When you enter a URL, your computer goes through a series of steps in order to convert the domain name into the IP address, which is in machine readable form. This process is also known as resolving the hostname. Your computer would initially look for the matching IP address in your computer’s local DNS cache. That’s because it usually stores all the information that the computer has received recently. This will assist you to load the specific web page on your browse quickly as well.
If the relevant information is not stored in your local device, the computer would get in touch with the recursive DSN servers of your ISP. Dedicated and specialized computers have been assigned for it and the DNS query will be resolved by it for you. Usually they would look up for the IP address on recursive servers and their caches.
If the IP address is not available in the recursive servers, the query will be passed onto the root name servers. A name server can be defined as a computer that can answer all sorts of questions related to domain names, including the IP addresses. If the IP address that you are looking for is available on the name servers, it would be sent to your internet browser.
Domain name servers have helped internet users to make their lives easy. That’s because they don’t need to go through the hassle of remembering IP addresses of the websites that they want to visit? The domain name servers can transform the IP address into a form that can easily be understood by the user. On the other hand, the domain names that are entered by the user are transformed into machine readable IP addresses with the help of domain name servers. Therefore, they play a major role behind the functionality of the Internet and helping people to access it without any hassle. In fact, all the people who browse the internet on a daily basis should know about it.
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