TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols, 2nd Edition

11. Name Resolution and the Domain Name System (DNS)

11.1. Introduction

The protocols we have studied so far operate using IP addresses to identify the hosts that participate in a distributed application. These addresses (especially IPv6 addresses) are cumbersome for humans to use and remember, so the Internet supports the use of host names to identify hosts, both clients and servers. In order to be used by protocols such as TCP and IP, host names are converted into IP addresses using a process known as name resolution. There are different forms of name resolution in the Internet, but the most prevalent and important one uses a distributed database system known as the Domain Name System (DNS) [MD88]. DNS runs as an application on the Internet, ...