Fundamentals of DNS
Learn about the fundamentals of DNS.
We'll cover the following...
What is DNS?
DNS stands for Domain Name System and is a hierarchical system to identify computers (or servers) by name. Essentially, it provides us with an IP address if we ask for a domain name. This process is called address resolution. By the way, the DNS is described in the RFC 1034 specification.
The hierarchical part of DNS refers to the structure. It's composed of root servers at the top (the root zone), then name servers for each TLD zone, and then further name servers for each domain (the domain zone), and so forth.
This is also reflected in the structure of domain names. Let’s take a look at www.educative.io for example:
Its correct DNS description would be:
www.educative.io.
The last dot is usually omitted, but computers use it internally. The last dot refers to the root zone. Going back from the last dot, we have the TLD (io in this case), the domain name (educative), and the subdomain (www). Each part of the domain name corresponds to a hierarchical level in the DNS. Subdomains can have multiple levels over subdomains under them.
TLD stands for t ...