What is DNS? and how it works?
Let’s start with its boring definition. “The Domain Name System(DNS) turns domain names into IP addresses, which browsers use to load internet pages.”
Let me simplify that. DNS is a system that helps load our favorite web pages. For example, your favorite website, Facebook.com, is hosted on a server, and if you want to access data from Facebook.com, you would need to remember their server's IP address. Since no one can remember IP addresses for all their favorite websites, DNS helps solve this problem. Whenever you enter Facebook.com in your browser, the DNS server converts this domain name (Facebook.com) into its corresponding IP address.
So to remember, DNS server is simple server,which has all records of IP address and its corresponding domain name. In other words, It is phonebook for the internet.
Let’s see How it works,
The DNS resolution process involves several steps:
When you type a website address in your browser, your request first goes to a DNS recurser.
The DNS recurser then contacts the Root nameservers to find information about the domain.
Root nameservers respond with the addresses of the appropriate Top-Level Domain (TLD) nameservers (like .com, .org, .net servers).
The DNS recurser then asks the TLD nameservers for details about the specific domain.
TLD nameservers provide the address of the authoritative nameservers (like GoDaddy servers, AWS, or Azure).
Finally, the DNS recurser contacts these authoritative nameservers to get the actual IP address of the website.
The IP address is returned to your browser, allowing you to access the website.
Do you know how many root name servers are there?
There are 13. You can check location of nameservers from here, https://root-servers.org/
Conclusion:
The Domain Name System is much more than just a "phone book" for the internet. While we rarely think about DNS when browsing the web, it's constantly working behind the scenes, translating domain names into IP addresses within milliseconds.
Remember: Every time you click on a link or type a web address, you're using DNS. It's one of those invisible technologies that we can't live without in our connected world.
