Domain Name System (DNS)

Domain Name System (DNS) is a distributed system that translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses. It allows users access to websites and online resources using easy to remember names instead of IP addresses. It is a fundamental part of the infrastructure for the internet providing a scalable and decentralized method of mapping domain names to IP addresses.

When a user enters a domain name (www.example.com) into a browser, the browser uses DNS resolution to find the correct IP address. First the browser looks at the local cache for an existing IP address associated with the domain. If it doesn’t exist or is expired, the browser then checks the DNS resolver through a DNS query.

DNS plays a critical role for making the internet more user-friendly. It is a resilient system that ensure the mapping of domain names to IP addresses across the global network efficiently.