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DNS – The Domain Name System And The Cloud   no comments

May 26, 2014 @ 9:25am Web hosting

Howdie do Turnkey Lovers,

 

For this article, I thought I would take you a little into my world as an engineer/technician at Turnkey Internet. Before we begin, as usual, I like to ask you a question. Today’s question, “What is DNS?” It seems that every day I speak with a client about this mysterious creature named DNS. Most people I speak with either fall into 2 categories:

 

  • People who know what DNS is
  • People who do not know what DNS is

 

In this post, we’re going to deal with people on the second bullet point. To begin, we first must get the technical jargon out of the way before going any further. The worse is when you’re reading a post and the author is using acronyms that you do not know what they stand for. I’ve been guilty of this already in this post and should clear it up before moving forward.

 

DNS stands for Domain Name System. DNS (Domain Name System) is a naming system for computers, services or any resource connected to the internet. It translates IP addresses to a domain name. For example, 208.85.0.20 would translate to http://turnkeyinternet.net/ To see this for yourself, open a web browser and enter in the address bar, 208.85.0.20. Go ahead, I will wait.

 

Our main website, http://turnkeyinternet.net/  should of immediately opened in your web browser. That in a nut shell is what DNS is and does. Now, let’s see if we can delve a little deeper into on how this works. I’m a big believer in using real world examples to teach different concepts. Not everyone can visualize an IP address, but what about your mailing address? Or the cross streets that you may live on? Are you getting the theme here? To help you understand exactly how DNS works, let’s use the real world example of driving to your friends house

 

For this example, let’s say you received a phone call from a buddy who said to swing on by to his/her new place for a house warming. Your friend has just recently moved. Now, how do you find him? You would need some piece of information that would allow you know which house is your buddy’s house. This piece of information would be the mailing address. Using the mailing address, you can enter your buddies address into a GPS(Global Positioning System) and be navigated directly to the house warming. The mailing address or your home address would be the equivalent of your IP address. Your IP address on the internet is where your files reside that display your website.

 

You may be saying, “Yes, that’s pretty clear, but you said DNS converts an IP to a domain name. What does my mailing address have to do with that?” In order to answer that question, we must first ask, how do you get your actual mail delivered? I’m talking about the mailman walking to your home and placing bills into your mailbox. How does the mailman know where to go? Sure, he has your mailing address, but where is that information stored? If you guessed the Post Office, you would be correct.

 

Let’s say someone writes you a letter and drops it off at the post office. Post office workers look up your name in their system to find your mailing address. The letter is then given to the corresponding mailman to be delivered to your home address. This is what DNS does in a nutshell. You sign up for a domain name which you purchased through TurnKey Internet. The place you just purchased the domain from is your registrar which means they registered your domain name in their system. This process is of registering your domain in their system is what keeps other users from being able to buy your domain. In our example above, the post office would be the registrar. You registered your home address with the post office so when someone drops a letter off a the post office, the mail can be routed to your home via mailmen.

 

This is what name servers do. After purchasing a domain from a register, such as TurnKey Internet, you create name servers at the registrar to inform the rest of the internet where your website resides. Much the same way the post office uses mailing addresses to deliver mail to your home.

 

You see, when you view items in real world scenarios, it can help to shed some light on concepts that you may not fully understand such as DNS. There are more avenues that you can take with DNS, but the general method is still the same.

 

For example, let’s say you move your website to a different host, you would need to update your registrar with the new name servers to point to the new location for your site. It’s the same as when you move to a new home and have to request a change of address from the post office. The post office then updates all its files and records to reflect the new address. This could include sending your new address out to businesses that you’ve dealt with as well. The rest of the world has to be updated to your new address. On the internet, this is what is called propagation. It’s when your new name server and IP information are updated across the internet so that everyone knows where your new site resolves after changing hosts. This can take 24 to 48 hours

 

Well, I hope that helps to clear up some confusion on this matter. I didn’t include too much technical jargon as this article is more about getting you to understand how DNS works at a very high level. I hope with this information, it will help you to better understand how the DNS works and how your hosting works here at Turnkey Internet.

 

 

Until next time

 

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