{"id":268,"date":"2020-09-14T11:00:09","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T10:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kbnco.names.dev.pdunsford.localdev\/?post_type=ht_kb&#038;p=268"},"modified":"2021-01-29T13:00:52","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T13:00:52","slug":"how-does-dns-work","status":"publish","type":"ht_kb","link":"https:\/\/www.websites-madesimple.co.uk\/support\/articles\/how-does-dns-work\/","title":{"rendered":"How does DNS work?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When you type an address into your browser and press return there are those couple of seconds where your computer has a think before it starts to download the web page you are looking for. It is in these couple of seconds where DNS comes in to play. Let&#8217;s use an example to explain this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you type in a web address such as&nbsp;<strong>https:\/\/admin.websites-madesimple.co.uk<\/strong>&nbsp;and your computer doesn&#8217;t know where to find the web page, it simply does what we would do&#8230;it asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/support\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/howdoesdnswork11.png\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>But who does it ask?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well with every internet provider there are servers that are called&nbsp;<strong>DNS resolvers.<\/strong>&nbsp;Your computer starts by asking these DNS resolvers&nbsp;<strong><em>&#8216;where is admin.websites-madesimple.co.uk?&#8217;<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;If the resolver knows it will simply respond with the location. Your computer will go to that location and, hey presto, the web page at admin.websites-madesimple.co.uk appears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/support\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/howdoesdnswork12.png\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>As you can see above, the computer asks the DNS resolver for the location of admin.websites-madesimple.co.uk, and the DNS resolver returns the answer of 85.233.160.210. Now your computer has the location (IP Address), it goes to the web server to retrieve the webpage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><br>But, what if the DNS resolvers do not know where to find admin.websites-madesimple.co.uk?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this situation the DNS resolver will go looking for the answer&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/support\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/howdoesdnswork.png\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This may look complicated but we have split it into sections below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As before, the computer asks the DNS resolver for the location of&nbsp;<strong>admin.websites-madesimple.co.uk<\/strong>, but as the DNS resolver does not know where&nbsp;<strong>names.co.uk<\/strong>&nbsp;is located, it has to find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The DNS resolver starts by reading the address from right to left, starting with&nbsp;<strong>.co.uk<\/strong>. As all .co.uk domains are managed through&nbsp;<strong>Nominet<\/strong>&nbsp;this will be the first stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The DNS resolver goes to&nbsp;<strong>Nominet<\/strong>&nbsp;and asks,&nbsp;<em>What are the nameservers for names.co.uk?<\/em>. (Nameservers are servers that store the DNS for a domain.) The Nominet servers will tell the DNS resolver what the nameservers are for names.co.uk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this case the nameservers for names.co.uk are&nbsp;<strong>ns0.phase8.net<\/strong>,&nbsp;<strong>ns1.phase8.net<\/strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong>ns2.phase8.net<\/strong>&nbsp;&#8211; these are the servers that store the DNS for names.co.uk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With this new information the DNS resolver then asks&nbsp;<strong>ns0.phase8.net<\/strong>&nbsp;for the location of&nbsp;<strong>admin.websites-madesimple.co.uk<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The nameservers tell the DNS resolver that&nbsp;<strong>admin.websites-madesimple.co.uk<\/strong>&nbsp;is at&nbsp;<strong>85.233.160.210<\/strong>, and the information is passed back to your computer. Your computer will go to that location, and once again the web page will appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After this, the DNS resolver will store the answer for 24 hours in case anyone else asks for that particular website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All of this happens in a couple of seconds, and now that the DNS resolver has stored the information it has found, the website will appear even faster should we search for it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you type an address into your browser and press return there are those couple of seconds where your computer has a think before it starts to download the web page you are looking for. It is in these couple of seconds where DNS comes in to play. Let&#8217;s use an example to explain this. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"ht-kb-category":[15],"ht-kb-tag":[14,16],"class_list":["post-268","ht_kb","type-ht_kb","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","ht_kb_category-domains","ht_kb_tag-dns","ht_kb_tag-domains"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How does DNS work? - Support Centre - Websites MadeSimple\u2122<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How does DNS work? - Support Centre - Websites MadeSimple\u2122\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When you type an address into your browser and press return there are those couple of seconds where your computer has a think before it starts to download the web page you are looking for. 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