What is DNS Lookup?

The Domain Name System or DNS as it's commonly known is among the most significant protocols available on the internet, but only a small percentage of people know what it is for. DNS is a standard that regulates how computers exchange information online. Its primary function, as it is stated is to connect names and numbers, which helps to convert famous domain names (such as statuscake.com) to the IP addresses (such for example, 8.8.8.8 in the case of Google.com) that your browser could utilize.

DNS is in essence an address book or phone book for the internet. Each device and every website that is connected to the network is assigned an IP address of its own Without DNS, we'd be required to maintain our own record that shows which domains are associated with those IP addresses and making the internet a lot more difficult to navigate!

The function that DNS serves thus is fairly simple, but the procedure itself isn't in the least, especially since it is a huge number of addresses being used as well as billions of DNS requests happening at any given moment.

In this article, we explain how the Domain Name System works, detailing each step, from the initial query to the moment when a website is loaded on your browser.

How does DNS Lookup work?

For the user, DNS lookup appears to be instantaneous, requiring nothing more than the domain's name and the Enter key. But there's a lot of work to be done behind the background and the request is, typically, moving between four servers before connecting the domain name to your IP address before loading the website.

These are four DNS servers that participate within this DNS protocol:

DNS Recursor The main purpose that the DNS Recursor is to receive the initial query and transmit it to the server that is relevant.

Root Nameserver- The Root Nameserver takes the first step of converting the domain name that was entered during the first query to the IP Address.

TLD Name Server - The Top Level Domain Server (TLD) is where the final part in an address (e.g. .com) is stored.

Authoritative Nameserver - The final step of the procedure it is when the Authoritative Nameserver returns the requested hostname (if it is able to access it) and then back on the DNS Recursor, resulting in the page being loaded.