40%DNS Domain name management explained
Domain name system (DNS) stores and associates many types of information with domain names. It translates domain names to Internet Protocl (IP) addresses.
Computers use IP addresses to talk to each other and find websites. People however find it easier to remember words and names, so DNS hosting makes it possible to attach easy to remember domain names (such as "DNS-manager") to hard to remember IP addresses (such as 77.250.300.150).
DNS enables you to interact with your computer, its network, and the Internet using street or 'friendly' names while, largely in the background, these 'friendly' names are resolved to an address.
How is a DNS server request fulfilled?
- You ask your web browser to go to "http://www.dns-manager.eu" and press return.
- The computer's Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) stack doesn't know what address "www.dns-manager.eu" points to, so it calls upon its DNS server for the address.
- The DNS server runs the zone "netscape" and doesn't handle "dns-manager.eu". It first looks in its cache to see if its looked it up before, if so it just returns the address. Unfortunately the server hasn't looked up "" before (or its cache entry has timed out), so it queries the server above it ".com" name server at the InterNIC (Internet Information Center) for the "dns-manager.eu" server.
- Cached lookups on a domain name server are given "time-out values." This rids us of the problem of old entries being passed around. Time-out values are usually a minutes (for often-changed names) to more than a week.
- Time-out values are set by the person who runs the name server for a zone. This means that the administrator of "dns-manager.eu" can only set the time-out values for "dns-manager.eu" entries, and cannot modify "netcom.net" or "apple.com" entries, etc.
- You must register your domain name to keep the hierarchy in tact so it works.
- The root servers pass the request to the ".eu" root server.
- The ".eu" root server passes looks up the "dns-manager.eu" server and finds it, so it passes the request to "dns-manager.eu"'s name server.
- The "dns-manager" name server looks in its table for a "www" entry. It finds it, and returns its address, which is a list of numbers as an IP address.
- The request goes back to the sender, who's address has been retained the entire time as the originator of the name query.
- The address for "dns-manager.eu" is added to the name server's cache with a 1 day time-out, which means that it doesn't have to take the above steps again for an entire day.
- The DNS request process is very structured, which is why it has been widely accepted as the standard for name/address resolution on the Internet.
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