DNS is like a telephone directory containing names, addresses, and telephone numbers. DNS is used on networks—both the internal networks of organizations and external networks across the internet. The DNS protocol is used to resolve hostnames (domain names) to IP addresses.
Before DNS, each computer contained a hosts file located in the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc directory. This file needed to be updated frequently to ensure that users were able to reach various websites or servers by specifying their hostnames or domain names. If the hosts file was not present, a user needed to specify the IP address of the server they would like to visit.
All devices on a network have an assigned IP address. ...
