What is a DNS server on a computer?

What is DNS and its purpose?

This is a question that seems to come up again and again.

The DNS system is built on trust, something few people like about.

DNS and its purpose is quite fascinating and complicated, and I will try to make this article as comprehensive as I can. So grab your tea or tea bag (I actually like that idea) because the amount of information we need to understand this all together is quite long.

DNS stands for Domain Name Server, but why should I care, and why should I care now? Let me elaborate some basic understanding about the DNS system. I will then try to give a more accurate statement about what DNS is, and what it does for the web community.

To be able to use the internet, we need a DNS system to translate domain names like yahoo.com into their respective IP addresses like 72.23.101.23 so that our browsers can reach the server we need to visit. This makes it possible for everyone to share files, data, applications and content easily. For example when we use the web, we do exactly the same thing to navigate to any other website using With our browsers, we are also doing more than just navigating to the website. To load the page we're trying to go to, we also need a DNS server to translate the address 192.168.110 to 24.31.42.11 for the browser and so that it can know to go to a particular website at a certain address

So DNS serves to provide the web with its essential connectivity. If you have never used it before, DNS is responsible for directing traffic across the internet which is very important. Imagine that a huge network of devices called the internet uses an OS called the OSI model. In the OSI model, each device connected to the internet is like a tower. Each tower has a specific part of the system. The tower controls the connections to other towers. The lowest level tower is connected to the internet. Since our network requires a server to connect us to it, we will ask the DNS to get the IP of the server from the internet. After the DNS gets the server, it tells us the IP address of the server.

How do I fix a DNS server problem?

I have a new PC running Windows 7.

It's a 64-bit system, but I installed 32-bit applications (as I'd be using it mainly for that).

When I try to connect to the internet through Firefox, the DNS server is no longer the one that I set up during installation. In order to get to a website I need, I have to go into the control panel, change the DNS server (to the correct one), and then go into Firefox and try again.

It would seem that this is not a problem with Firefox, or that I've somehow disabled my settings in Firefox. It seems that I don't have to do this for Chrome, though I haven't tried that yet. I also tried resetting the browser to default settings, but that didn't work.

So, how do I fix this problem? Right click on the desktop, go to properties, select Advanced tab, and you will see an option "Internet options". If you have the same issue on other computers, you could check if there are any changes on the hosts file.

What is a DNS server on a computer?

A DNS server is a server that responds to queries for host names or addresses.

These queries are usually addressed to the server by its hostname or IP address. For example, www.google.com is a DNS server; you type www.com into your browser, which translates the name to an IP address.

What is a host? A hostname is a unique human-readable name for a computer on a network. Your hostname is like your legal name (or at least you can make it sound like your legal name). In most cases, your hostname ends in a period.com or mail. The domain name extension .org is not necessary.

Your hostname is an alias for a computer on your network. Think of your hostname as a shortcut for accessing your networked computer. In a sense, a hostname is a shortcut for your computer's IP address.

What is an IP address? An IP address is a unique numerical identifier for your computer on the Internet. IP addresses are assigned to each of the hundreds of thousands of Internet servers around the world.

Think of the IP address as an alias for your computer. You can use the IP address to access your computer.

What is an IP address for a server? An IP address is assigned to a computer that runs a network service. Most web servers and DNS servers run a service that translates hostnames into IP addresses. Examples of such services are your web browser's default hostname for resolving names into IP addresses, or the default IP address of a DNS server.

What is a domain name? A domain name is a simple way of identifying a host or computer on a network. For example, the domain name for www.com is simply www.

Domain names are assigned to each host or computer that is accessible over the Internet. Each host or computer has a unique combination of a top-level domain name (such as .com) and a second-level domain name (such as www).

What is a subdomain? A subdomain is a part of a domain name. For example, the subdomain of www.com is www.

How do you contact a computer using the Domain Name System?