What Is A DNS And Why It Is Useful?

Jan 19
13:08

2015

John Ebrahim

John Ebrahim

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As an internet user or a website owner, you might hear the term domain name system every now and then.

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To the computer and systems expert,What Is A DNS And Why It Is Useful? Articles it is a frequently used term, but for the layman, it is incomprehensible. So, what is the domain name system and what is its use?

The domain name system is the largest distributed network in the world. It is an internet service that helps to locate the domain names on the servers. When you type in a website name in the internet browser, the domain name system, or DNS, translates it into the corresponding IP address. This IP address is the internet protocol address. The domain name system looks for and finds the data required to establish the requested network connection.

So,  every time a device connects to the internet - be it a smart phone, home or office computer or a web hosting server, it is issued with an internet protocol address which is unique to it. An IP address, basically, is a unique set of numbers that is assigned to a device that connects to the internet. This address can’t be used by any other device simultaneously and is used to recognize and differentiate the device by the servers among several others.

The computer and other devices may be assigned a different IP address every time they log on to the internet. This is known as the dynamic internet address. Large organizations and web hosting servers usually opt for static IP addresses which do not change over time.

So, typing in the website names in the address bar of the World Wide Web browsers is extremely easy and convenient than to remember the set of IP address numbers for every single one of them!! Without it, surfing the net would be very difficult. This makes the domain name systems important as it eliminates the need to remember all the IP addresses of the websites.

The domain name system is spread over a million of networks but works as a single database. When the IP address of a website is not found on a server, it is transferred to the other name server and so forth to find the same. This process happens in the fractions of seconds to find the valid IP address of a corresponding website. Once all this is done, the web server fetches the requested page from the correct site and displays it. While all this sounds extremely complex to us, it is an easy job for the devices.

The DNS system offers many benefits. By subscribing to a good DNS network, the clients can get high security, network stability and the uninterrupted performance. For a stable network, these systems need to be regularly redesigned and researched to meet the industry standards. The regular upgradation of these systems equips them to provide defense against the networking and security threats. A robust system offers the highest quality carrier facilities, better data transfer speeds, efficient interoperability, strategic connectivity and deliverability.

So, domain name systems provide great benefits to small and big organizations alike.