When you spend time on the Internet, whether you are browsing or sending emails, you are using the hidden Domain Name System (DNS). The DNS is a unique naming system, which works like a database that is used for computer systems, services and other resources that are connected with the Internet. The DNS system translates domain names, which can easily be remembered by humans, to a numerical identity, that can be used by computers.
Every time you use a domain name you are accessing the Internet’s domain name server. DNS is often associated with a phone book; a human remembers the name and the phone book, similar to the DNS, provides the number or Internet Protocol (IP) address. For example www.trellian.com translates to 216.240.187.4.
DNS also stores mail servers, which accept emails for a particular domain.
As every machine on the Internet has its own IP address there are billions of IP addresses and billions of DNS requests daily, due to the excessive use of the internet, the hard part for the DNS is that IP addresses and domain names are created and change daily.
Jon Postel, the founder of ICANN, requested that Paul Mockapetris invent the Domain Name System (DNS), in 1983, due to the increase in Internet usage.
When a computer is originally set up to access the Internet it will be told which name server to use, to convert domain names into IP addresses.
When you type a domain name into the web browser the DNS converts the domain name into an IP address, so it can go to the requested site.
The DNS can do one of four things:
- It can answer the request with the IP address as it already knows the IP address for the particular domain.
- It can contact another name server to identify the IP address for the domain name requested.
- It may not know the IP address for the requested domain but it can provide an IP address for a name server that knows more.
- It also can produce an error message if the request domain does not exist or is invalid.
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