Mike, What is DNS and what does it do?

The term, DNS (Domain Name Service) is nothing more than an extremely large Hosts file that resides at a specific Internet Address for a specific server and contains host translations. Let me explain...

The true network address for any web site is really a set of four, three-digit numbers separated by periods; leading zeros are truncated. In the case of www.yahoo.com, its main Internet Address is 209.131.36.158. But it’s impractical for users of the World Wide Web to remember all of the variations of Internet Addresses (gets really cumbersome), so these need to be translated into an alias (nick) name for ease of use.

To gain a visual on this, open your Internet Browser, enter http://209.131.36.158/ into your URL address bar, and press GO. If you did this right http://www.yahoo.com/ should show up.

So how does it know this?

The DNS provided to you by your ISP (Internet Service Provider) will translate 209.131.36.158 to http://www.yahoo.com/, 74.125.19.104 to http://www.google.com/, etc. And whenever you see a DNS error on a web page it usually means the translation does not exist (no such website) or the DNS address provided to you by your ISP is either down, missing, or is incorrect.

What do you do in these instances?

Call your ISP and explain the issue. Let them troubleshoot and investigate the problem. Chances are the solution is a simple fix.

ITC Computer Services of Arizona

Office/Fax: 602-375-7934

Mobile: 602-684-7501

Web Site: http://www.itcaz.com/

Email: mike@itcaz.com