What is DNS?

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical naming system that allows any resource connected to the Internet to be referenced by a name. The DNS translates human-readable names into IP addresses, which are numbers computers use to communicate with each other.

Brief History of the DNS

The DNS was originally developed in 1983 when the Internet was still a new and emerging technology. After several years of development, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) released RFCs 1034 and 1035 in 1987, which outlined the implementation details for the DNS protocol.

Using the DNS in day-to-day life

Today, most people use DNS without even knowing it. If you type "google.com" into your browser's address bar, your computer will query its local DNS server to find out where that website's IP address is located on the web (in this case, it'll tell you that Google's site lives at 74.125.230.162).