One day Mickey was taking a walk at the riverside when Minnie came running to him
Minnie – Hey Mickey, Wait for me!
Mickey – Hi Minnie, what happened?
Minnie – I need to talk to you
Mickey – Sure, tell me
Minnie – Do you know what is DNS?
Mickey – Sure I do, Minnie
Minnie – Great can you make me understand, like from scratch
Mickey – I know, the best way you understand is with a Story. Let me tell you one
Minnie – Great, let’s go to some quiet place
Mickey & Minnie went to a quiet place near the river
Mickey – Do you have a Contact List on your phone
Minnie – Yes I do have, what’s about that
Mickey – What does it do
Minnie – Mickey! Stop asking me stupid questions. Everyone knows, contacts are to save people names with their phone numbers
Mickey – Yes! So it’s like matching people names with their numbers and you can search it anytime and get to the right person
Minnie – Of course
Mickey – Now you cannot remember the phone numbers for every person, but you can easily remember the names and with that can look up in the Contacts and get the numbers and reach the person
Minnie – Yes, Of course!
Mickey – Like people have phone numbers, in the same way, every computer or server or website on the internet has an IP address
Minnie – Okay
Mickey – And as it is difficult to remember the IP addresses for every computer on the internet, they have easy to remember names called Domain Names
Minnie – Okay, so like people have names and numbers, Similarly, on the internet, computers have a name (domain name) and an IP
Mickey – You got it. Now whenever we have to reach any server or computer or application we use a domain name like www.example.com
Minnie – Yes, that’s true
Mickey – Now in order to connect to the physical server, internally, the network needs to know the IP of the system to connect. Now the process or system that looks up the IP and connects to the right system is called DNS or Domain Name System
Minnie – Okay I am starting to get it
Mickey – See internet is a giant network of computers. Each computer is assigned a unique IP address that helps other computers identify it
This IP address is a string of numbers like 192.168.10.101
Now imagine if you have to remember a unique IP for every website you want to visit, it will be difficult
Minnie – Yeah
Mickey – Therefore Domain Names were invented to solve the problem. So now we can use alphabets and have easy to remember names like example.com, google.com
DNS or Domain Name System translates these domain names into IP address and locates the right computer on the internet
So in very simple words
DNS, or the Domain Name System, translates human-readable domain names (www.example.com) to machine-readable IP addresses (192.168.1.10)
Minnie – Okay, now I get what is DNS and what it does. But how exactly does it work
Mickey – Okay, that’s interesting
There are 5 Steps
- You open the browser and type www.example.com and hit Enter. Immediately there is a check to see if you have visited this website previouslyIf you have, the DNS records are found in your computer’s DNS cache, then the rest of the DNS lookup is skipped and you will be taken directly to www.example.com
DNS cache is like an address book saved on your computer with the domain name server (DNS) information of each website you visit. You can clear it if you want
- Suppose you are visiting this website for the first time from your system, then no DNS records are found, then a query is sent to your local DNS server. Usually, this is your Internet Provider’s server and is often called “Resolving Name Server” or DNS Resolver
- If the records are not cached on the Resolving Name server, then the request is forwarded to a “Root Name server” to locate the DNS records. Also called Root ServerRoot Name servers are designated servers around the world that are responsible for storing DNS data. Once the DNS record is found, it’s cached by your computer
- If the name is still not resolved, the request is forwarded to TLD nameserver (Top Level Domain server)
- Now that the DNS records are located, a connection to the server, where the website is stored will be opened and www.example.com will be displayed on your screen
Minnie – Wow, that looks like a long process
Mickey – It all happens in less than what you take to blink
Minnie – Wow! I feel so good now
Mickey – Okay, let’s go home
Minnie – No let’s sit here. I want to enjoy the sunset
Mickey – Sure, Minnie
Minnie – You are my best friend
Mickey – I am always here for you 🙂
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References
https://www.wpbeginner.com/glossary/dns/
https://totaluptime.com/kb/how-does-a-dns-query-work/
