Overview of DNS

DNS allows computers or servers to find each other across the internet. Before you try to understand DNS, you first need to understand domain names.

Domain Names

Consider your mobile phone. Your mobile phone has a unique 11-digit number that allows people to contact you. If someone would like to contact you, they either type in the 11-digit number or search through their contacts list to find you by name. How often do you type in the mobile number when you try to contact someone? These days, most people just memorize their own mobile number and simply can’t remember the phone numbers of their entire contact list. Instead, they rely on the name-to-number mapping in their phone’s Contacts app.

Domain names are essentially the same. Every computer or server that wants to connect to the internet must have an IP address, and it is these IP addresses that we use to send information to when trying to communicate with another server. IP addresses...