DNS server?

[mikeshn]

I have a toruble to understand the purpose of DNS server?
Thanks

 

[Vegito]

translate name into ip ie

my dns server is www.sex.com

so i register sex.com with
DNS1 as 192.168.1.1
DNS2 as 192.168.1.2
WWW as 192.168.1.3

so when you try to goto www.sex.com the DNS find the IP address as 192.168.1.3 and lets you go there..

something like that

 

[Jhereg]

In the most simple form a DNS translates a URL to an IP address
for example : www.anandtech.com = 216.151.100.123

Since humans are better with names than numbers and machines don't have great linguistic skills DNS is the "translator" .

If you want to see DNS in action go to a command prompt and type : ping ( whatever website address you want) and then hit enter. You will see that the machine immediately translates that URL to an IP address

 

[mikeshn]

Therefore, need some program to translate Name to IP or vise verse. Why server? Which program translates that?
Thanks a lot

 

[Saltin]

DNS is a network service, not a program per say.

Remember, computers like to use numbers ( like IP addresses)
Humans like to use names ( like www.hello.com).

DNS does the translation from FQDN to IP address, and vice versa.

 

[Jhereg]

The reason for being on a server is that servers are designed to accomodate many requests for resolution. regular desktops are not.
DNS can be very complex since you can define which IP to resolve to depending on the type of service requested
The extra horsepower, reliablilty and stability is needed to host any domain/ internet wide service.