DNS & IP

Got our new Niki topic for the week and it’s related to DNS & IP Address. Nothing foreign about IP addresses, but what caught me off guard was DNS. What in the world is DNS you might ask? Well, DNS stands for Domain Name System.

DNS is an internet service that translates domain names/hostnames to IP addresses. This is one of the crucial services on the Internet, greatly facilitating the access of users to websites, by helping each visitor refer to the desired website by typing its alpha-numeric name in the browser instead of its real numeric system name which is called the IP address. Basically it acts just like a phonebook for the cyberspace. While the people at Howstuffworks termed it as a GPS for the internet, I’ll make things simpler, the DNS acts like a phonebook, and the IP addresses are just like the phone numbers. It makes searching for websites so much easier.

With so much to handle, DNS servers rely on network efficiency and Internet protocols. IP addresses do for computer networks what phone numbers do for people’s telephones. With tens of millions of computers connected to the internet, having these IP addresses sorted out is essential to keep things straight.

Here’s a video that I found in the net that shows how the internet works:

Hmm, i’m stuffed, still thinking of what I can expand on this subject.
Relating IP addresses and DNS to the GPS and the phonebook sounds like a fun thing to work on though! Look out for more ideas soon. – Brainstorming in process.