What is DNS?
Learn what DNS is, how it works, and common issues that can arise with DNS resolution.
Beginner10 min
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Learn what DNS is, how it works, and common issues that can arise with DNS resolution.
Try our AI Troubleshooting Assistant for personalized help.
DNS stands for Domain Name System. It is often called the phone book of the internet because it helps devices find websites using easy-to-remember names instead of numerical IP addresses.
Think about making a phone call. You usually search for a person's name in your contacts rather than memorizing their phone number. Behind the scenes, your phone matches that name to the correct number and routes the call. DNS works in a very similar way.
When you type a website address such as google.com into your browser, your device sends a request to a DNS server. The DNS server looks up the corresponding IP address for that website and returns it to your device. Once the IP address is found, your browser can connect to the correct web server and display the website.
Without DNS, users would need to remember IP addresses like 142.250.190.78 instead of simple domain names such as google.com.
DNS is used every day by:
In simple terms, DNS translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses that computers and network devices can understand.
Domain Name | IP Address
google.com | 142.250.x.x
youtube.com | 142.251.x.x
amazon.com | 54.x.x.x
When you enter a domain name, DNS performs the lookup so you don't have to remember the IP address.
DNS acts as a translator between humans and computers. Humans use domain names, while computers communicate using IP addresses. DNS bridges the gap by converting website names into the IP addresses needed to locate and load online resources.
Sources:
https://aws.amazon.com/route53/what-is-dns/
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