What is DNS? (“The Phonebook of Internet”) — Cheatsheet

What is DNS? (“The Phonebook of Internet”) — Cheatsheet

DNS, or the Domain Name System, resolves human readable domain names (for example, www.hacksheets.in) to machine readable IP addresses (for example, 192.0.1.45).

DNS Resolution Steps

- A user types ‘www.hacksheets.in’ into a web browser and the system sends the query to a DNS resolver.

- This resolver then sends the query to the DNS root nameserver (.).

- The root server then responds to the resolver with the address of a Top-Level Domain (TLD) DNS server (.in)

- The resolver then makes a request to the .in TLD.

- The TLD server then responds with the IP address of the domain’s nameserver, www.hacksheets.in.

- The resolver sends a query to the domain’s nameserver.

- The IP address for www.hacksheets.in is then returned to the resolver

- The DNS resolver then responds to the web browser with the IP address of the domain.

- The browser makes an HTTP request to the IP address.

- The server at that IP returns the webpage to be rendered in the browser.