We humans can remember websites by their recognizable alphabetical names (such as www.example.com) and less likely by their machine-readable IP Addresses (for example, 190.0.10.40). This is where the DNS comes into picture.
DNS is like a master phone book of the Internet. Much like your phonebook contains the names and phone numbers of your friends and family, the DNS is an extraordinarily huge database that contains the domain names and corresponding IP Addresses. When you type in the name of a website in your browser, your computer looks for the IP Address of the corresponding website before it could establish a connection to that website and start loading it’s content. Without the DNS, the Internet would not be what it is today. If the DNS didn’t exist, you would have to remember long, complex numerical IP Address of each favorite website you want to visit, or write it down somewhere else.
(more…)