What is DNS? well, it means “Domain Name System” and it relates to the fact that no matter how good our memory is, it is easier for us to remember names than numbers. Since any computer/device that is attached to a network, no matter if the network is local or external (Internet), that computer has an IP address (which is how any device is being recognized and attached to the network). Since it might be easy to remember one address (maybe), if you have more than one computer on the network this trick might become a bit complex, so the solution is to turn network IP into names.

DNS is what this is all about, the DNS is a table that translates between network address IP’s to names. The names usually relate to domain names, since on the internet and the way servers work, domain names enable better organizing the naming way. The domain is usually a “name.ext” like google.com. Since we all know from the internet that most of the addresses are divided into 3 parts like www.google.com, the 3 parts enable better dividing of the groups (called the domain) and it’s children. What it means is the WWW is part of the domain called google.com.

There are different types of child names but the most common ones are the WWW (World Wide Web) which is being used for websites on the internet, there are ftp.google.com which will be the FTP of Google (File Transfer Protocol) used for hosting files, or another common full DNS name is the MAIL (e-mails) like mail.google.com – where the mail relates to mail servers for transferring e-mails. So now you can see all of those names actually reside in google.com which means they are all related to the same domain.

Now, DNS servers can reside on your network (local DNS server), which will translate your local network addresses into domain names, and connect the local DNS to a worldwide one. DNS server can also reside on the internet in a hosting, which you can access (usually the ISP will provide you with DNS will translate internet addresses), using the ISP’s DNS will enable you to browse the internet, and by adding it to your local DNS, your company will be able to browse the internet using domain names.

Creating your own DNS:

  1. One of the easiest ways if you know Linux – is to create a DNS server based on a Linux operating system. There are some basics already built within Linux that you only need to configure, and then change your DNS IP relations to that Linux DNS server you have created. You might want to use a whole DNS program called BIND9, which is a more sophisticated DNS server software that can be easily installed on any of your Linux operating systems.
  2. Microsoft Windows servers and operating systems also can enable DNS servers. You can use local DNS using the HOSTS file (which is like a translation table for translating addresses to names, this file is a default file windows uses, so if you define it, windows will check it and use it before other DNS servers) and you can create an actual DNS server.

Now I believe you understand DNS better, what it is and what is it used for. Also, I believe you have some examples to give you some idea on how DNS is being created both on Linux and on Windows operating systems and networks.