Domain Name System

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Revision as of 04:23, 8 April 2009 by Ngck (Talk)

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DNS is part of the Application Layer of the TCP/IP Internet Protocol Suite.^[2]

DNS is a hierarchical naming system used to map human-readable machine names into Internet Protocol addresses (IP addresses) for the Internet.^[1] Although IP addresses provide a compact representation for identifying machines, users prefer to assign machines with pronounceable, meaningful, and easy-to-remember names.^[1] DNS can be thought of as the Internet’s Phone Book. Instead of looking up a phone number using the person’s name or business’s name, the IP address can be looked up by using the domain name. For example, DNS translates the domain name www.mcmaster.ca into 130.113.64.65. DNS is also able to translate from IP addresses to domain names, which is known as Reverse Mapping or Inverse Mapping.^[1]

DNS is part of the Application Layer of the TCP/IP Internet Protocol Suite. It has two conceptually independent aspects. The first is abstract: it specifies the name syntax and rules for domain names.^[1] The second is concrete: it specifies the implementation of a system that efficiently maps names to addresses.^[1]

History of DNS

DNS^[1]

Name Syntax And Rules Of DNS

Top-Level Domains

Name Syntax And Type

Implementation of DNS

Mapping Domain Names To Addresses

Domain Name Resolution

Caching