How Domain Name System Works – Guide
If you want to call someone with your mobile phone, it is very unlikely that you will enter the phone number. Instead, you load the contact list and search for the person’s name. DNS does the same thing when you want to load a website. In some cases, DNS resolution is a one-step process, while in other cases, multiple DNS servers need to be contacted. The diagram below shows the steps required in this process and does not take into account browser caching. The DNS resolution process involves converting a hostname (eg www.example.com) to a computer-compatible IP address (eg 192.168.1.1).
Every device on the Internet is given an IP address, and that address is needed to find that device from the Internet. When a user wants to load a web page, a translation must occur between what a user types in their web browser (example.com) and the friendly address needed to locate the example.com web page. To understand the process behind DNS resolution, it is important to understand the different hardware components that a DNS query must go through.
Submit a request to resolve a domain name
When you type www.phoenixnap.com into a browser to load the web page, your computer asks for the IP address of the computer on which you are browsing.
Look for an IP locally
Your computer looks for the IP address for the domain name in its local DNS cache database. If it finds the IP address, it tries to connect to online sources.
If you are trying to connect to a website and the DNS cache has the IP data for that website, your computer will load the page immediately. This is because your computer already has the information needed to connect to the website, and doesn’t have to send it over to your ISP. ..
Contact your ISP and your recursive DNS server to resolve a domain name
A computer’s DNS cache database may not always contain the data needed to resolve a domain name. In this case, the request goes further to your ISP and your DNS server.
When a user requests a website, the resolver looks through its logs to find the correct IP address. If the necessary information is present in ISP server’s cached records, the computer retrieves the IP and connects to the website. If ISP’s recursive DNS server cannot resolve domain name, it will contact other DNS servers to provide information back to you. That’s why we call them recursive servers. ..
Final note
Domain Name System (DNS) is a system used to identify and locate websites. It is a series of numbers that are used to identify a website. The DNS system was created in the early 1990s and it is still in use today. The DNS system helps you find websites by providing a list of specific addresses that can be used to access them.
