
Using a simpler, more memorable name in place of a host's numerical address dates back to the ARPANET era. That data can be used to gain insight on, and track responsibility for, a given host on the Internet. For zones operated by a registry, administrative information is often complemented by the registry's RDAP and WHOIS services. Each subdomain is a zone of administrative autonomy delegated to a manager. The DNS reflects the structure of administrative responsibility in the Internet.

This process of using the DNS to assign proximal servers to users is key to providing faster and more reliable responses on the Internet and is widely used by most major Internet services. The key functionality of the DNS exploited here is that different users can simultaneously receive different translations for the same domain name, a key point of divergence from a traditional phone-book view of the DNS. When a user accesses a distributed Internet service using a URL, the domain name of the URL is translated to the IP address of a server that is proximal to the user.

Users take advantage of this when they use meaningful Uniform Resource Locators ( URLs) and e-mail addresses without having to know how the computer actually locates the services.Īn important and ubiquitous function of the DNS is its central role in distributed Internet services such as cloud services and content delivery networks. The DNS can be quickly and transparently updated, allowing a service's location on the network to change without affecting the end users, who continue to use the same hostname. 4.3 Circular dependencies and glue recordsĪn often-used analogy to explain the Domain Name System is that it serves as the phone book for the Internet by translating human-friendly computer hostnames into IP addresses.4.1.1 Recursive and caching name server.

