DNS Demystified
Interactive guide to understanding DNS
What is DNS?
The Domain Name System (DNS) is like a phone book for the internet. It translates human-friendly domain names into IP addresses that computers use to communicate.
🧠 What Humans Remember
💻 What Computers Need
DNS bridges the gap between human-readable names and machine-readable addresses
Try It Yourself
Enter a domain name to see its IP address:
A Brief History
HOSTS.TXT
A single file at Stanford maintained all hostname-to-IP mappings. Everyone downloaded it to stay updated.
DNS is Born
Paul Mockapetris invented DNS (RFC 882 & 883). A distributed, hierarchical system that could scale with the growing internet.
Trillions of Queries
DNS handles over 1 trillion queries per day. It's the backbone of the internet, yet invisible to most users.
Hierarchical
Organized as a tree from root to domains
Distributed
No single point of failure
Cached
Responses cached for performance