What is DNS? Domain Name System, DNS Server, and IP Address Concepts Explained
Introduction By the end of this article, you should have a better understanding of: What DNS is and what it does What DNS servers do How Internet Protocol (IP) Addresses work in the context of DNS Important concepts There are some essential mental models to be familiar with when learning about DNS, DNS servers, and IP addresses. Going over these concepts now, before starting to learn about DNS, will help make sense of all the different terms used to describe behavior that fits into these models, and aid in memory retention. Mental models give you a frame of reference when things get a little weird and unfamiliar. So let’s lay the groundwork. Query and response. This is when Thing 1 asks Thing 2 for something, and Thing 2 responds to that request. Like this: Query and Response Parent-child node relationships and graphs that look like this (only more complicated). Tree graph Messages. It’s not a query and response because there is no response. In the worl...