Understanding How DNS Works
Computers route packets to each other on networks by knowing the IP addresses of their peers. IPs are essentially large numbers represented with different notations depending on the IP version—for example, 142.251.209.46 is an address in IPv4’s notation. Of course, users don’t go around typing IP addresses or memorizing the address of every computer on the Internet. We’re used to a cozy system of domain names. We only need to remember elixir-lang.org rather than the IP for the server that hosts the website. That’s where DNS comes in: its job is to translate domain names to IP addresses, as its name—Domain Name System—implies.
At its core, DNS is a distributed key-value database. Like other key-value databases, it ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access