What is DNS? How does it work?

[kingmati]

Domain Name System (DNS) manages the names of public websites and internet domains. It controls your domain name’s website and email settings. Whenever a visitor goes to your domain, DNS settings will control which server it will reach out to. It matches the name of the website (its domain) to the address for that same website (IP Address).

How does it work?

DNS is based on the client-server network architecture. Your web browser is like a client (DNS Resolver) and it requests your ISP’s DNS servers when you navigate through the websites.

Whenever a DNS server receives a request, it temporarily behaves as a DNS client. The server passes the request to another DNS server (as a client) and this process continues until the request arrives at a server of matching IP address. Then the response flows back through the chain of DNS servers to the original client, that is, your browser.

Why are they used?

Domain names are alphabetic and they are easier to remember as compared to stream of numbers in the IP Address. Every time you use a domain name, the DNS service translates the name to the corresponding IP address thereby making the web address convenient.

 

[Graybeard]

That is correct for a user with a browser.

Setting up server to resolve properly is a lot more complicated.

DNS Propagation Test for dns-zone - Explore the results

Observe the dns-zone articles lookup and DNS propagation results. See how dns-zone is responding from all major ISPs and DNS servers around the world.

dnspropagation.net

I have servers at Linode and Digital Ocean and LeaseWeb Netherlands/cloudns.net.

DNS Manager host specific tutorial.

8.8.8.8 ,8.8.8.6 <google DNS
and 1.1.1.1 < Cloudflare are better DNS resolving servers than your ISP servers as they update faster

 

[arturotozucc]

DNS stands for “Domain Name System”. It’s a system that lets you connect to websites by matching human-readable domain names with the unique ID of the server where a website is stored.

 

[James Mason]

The Domain Name System (DNS) is the phonebook of the Internet. Humans access information online through domain names, like nytimes.com or espn.com
The Internet's DNS system works much like a phone book by managing the mapping between names and numbers. DNS servers translate requests for names into IP addresses, controlling which server an end user will reach when they type a domain name into their web browser. These requests are called queries

 

[Francesca90]

The Internet's DNS system works much like a phone book by managing the mapping between names and numbers. DNS servers translate requests for names into IP addresses, controlling which server an end user will reach when they type a domain name into their web browser. These requests are called queries.

 

[PaidPoints]

DNS, as I understood it works like VPN

The only thing they have in common is both are acronyms.

 

[Graybeard]

DNS, as I understood it works like VPN

You don't know anything about DNS then --that's obvious