From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet. It associates various information with domain names assigned to such participants. Most importantly, it translates human meaningful domain names to the numerical (binary) identifiers associated with networking equipment for the purpose of locating and addressing these devices world-wide. An often used analogy to explain the Domain Name System is that it serves as the "phone book" for the Internet by translating human-friendly computer hostnames into IP addresses. For example, www.example.com translates to 208.77.188.166.
The Domain Name System makes it possible to assign domain names to groups of Internet users in a meaningful way, independent of each user's physical location. Because of this, World-Wide Web (WWW) hyperlinks and Internet contact information can remain consistent and constant even if the current Internet routing arrangements change or the participant uses a mobile device. Internet domain names are easier to remember than IP addresses such as 208.77.188.166(IPv4) or 2001:db8:1f70::999:de8:7648:6e8 (IPv6). People take advantage of this when they recite meaningful URLs and e-mail addresses without having to know how the machine will actually locate them.
The Domain Name System distributes the responsibility of assigning domain names and mapping those names to IP addresses by designating authoritative name servers for each domain. Authoritative name servers are assigned to be responsible for their particular domains, and in turn can assign other authoritative name servers for their sub-domains. This mechanism has made the DNS distributed, fault tolerant, and helped avoid the need for a single central register to be continually consulted and updated.
In general, the Domain Name System also stores other types of information, such as the list of mail servers that accept email for a given Internet domain. By providing a world-wide, distributed keyword-based redirection service, the Domain Name System is an essential component of the functionality of the Internet.
Other identifiers such as RFID tags, UPC codes, International characters in email addresses and host names, and a variety of other identifiers could all potentially utilize DNS
The Domain Name System also defines the technical underpinnings of the functionality of this database service. For this purpose it defines the DNS protocol, a detailed specification of the data structures and communication exchanges used in DNS, as part of the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP). The context of the DNS within the Internet protocols may be seen in the following diagram. The DNS protocol was developed and defined in the early 1980s and published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (cf. History).
Structure
The domain name space
Domain names, arranged in a tree, cut into zones, each served by a nameserver.
The domain name space consists of a tree of domain names. Each node or leaf in the tree has zero or more resource records, which hold information associated with the domain name. The tree sub-divides into zones beginning at the root zone. A DNS zone consists of a collection of connected nodes authoritatively served by an authoritative nameserver. (Note that a single nameserver can host several zones.)
Administrative responsibility over any zone may be divided, thereby creating additional zones. Authority is said to be delegated for a portion of the old space, usually in form of sub-domains, to another nameserver and administrative entity. The old zone ceases to be authoritative for the new zone.
Parts of a domain name
A domain name usually consists of two or more parts (technically a label), which is conventionally written separated by dots, such as example.com.
The rightmost label conveys the top-level domain (for example, the address www.example.com has the top-level domain com).
Each label to the left specifies a subdivision, or subdomain of the domain above it. Note: “subdomain” expresses relative dependence, not absolute dependence. For example: example.com is a subdomain of the com domain, and www.example.com is a subdomain of the domain example.com. In theory, this subdivision can go down 127 levels. Each label can contain up to 63 octets. The whole domain name may not exceed a total length of 253 octets. In practice, some domain registries may have shorter limits.
A hostname refers to a domain name that has one or more associated IP addresses; ie: the 'www.example.com' and 'example.com' domains are both hostnames, however, the 'com' domain is not.
DNS servers
Main article: Name server
The Domain Name System is maintained by a distributed database system, which uses the client-server model. The nodes of this database are the name servers. Each domain or subdomain has one or more authoritative DNS servers that publish information about that domain and the name servers of any domains subordinate to it. The top of the hierarchy is served by the root nameservers: the servers to query when looking up (resolving) a top-level domain name (TLD).
DNS resolvers
The client-side of the DNS is called a DNS resolver. It is responsible for initiating and sequencing the queries that ultimately lead to a full resolution (translation) of the resource sought, e.g., translation of a domain name into an IP address.
A DNS query may be either a recursive query or a non-recursive query:
A non-recursive query is one in which the DNS server may provide a partial answer to the query (or give an error).
A recursive query is one where the DNS server will fully answer the query (or give an error). DNS servers are not required to support recursive queries.
The resolver (or another DNS server acting recursively on behalf of the resolver) negotiates use of recursive service using bits in the query headers.
Resolving usually entails iterating through several name servers to find the needed information. However, some resolvers function simplistically and can communicate only with a single name server. These simple resolvers rely on a recursive query to a recursive name server to perform the work of finding information for them.
Address resolution mechanism
(This description deliberately uses the fictional .example TLD in accordance with the DNS guidelines.)
In theory a full host name may have several name segments, (e.g ahost.ofasubnet.ofabiggernet.inadomain.example). In practice, full host names will frequently consist of just three segments (ahost.inadomain.example, and most often www.inadomain.example). For querying purposes, software interprets the name segment by segment, from right to left, using an iterative search procedure. At each step along the way, the program queries a corresponding DNS server to provide a pointer to the next server which it should consult.
A DNS recursor consults three nameservers to resolve the address www.wikipedia.org.
As originally envisaged, the process was as simple as:
the local system is pre-configured with the known addresses of the root servers in a file of root hints, which need to be updated periodically by the local administrator from a reliable source to be kept up to date with the changes which occur over time.
query one of the root servers to find the server authoritative for the next level down (so in the case of our simple hostname, a root server would be asked for the address of a server with detailed knowledge of the example top level domain).
querying this second server for the address of a DNS server with detailed knowledge of the second-level domain (inadomain.example in our example).
repeating the previous step to progress down the name, until the final step which would, rather than generating the address of the next DNS server, return the final address sought.
The diagram illustrates this process for the real host www.wikipedia.org.
The mechanism in this simple form has a difficulty: it places a huge operating burden on the root servers, with every search for an address starting by querying one of them. Being as critical as they are to the overall function of the system, such heavy use would create an insurmountable bottleneck for trillions of queries placed every day. In practice caching is used to overcome this problem, and in actual fact root nameservers deal with very little of the total traffic.
Circular dependencies and glue records
Name servers in delegations appear listed by name, rather than by IP address. This means that a resolving name server must issue another DNS request to find out the IP address of the server to which it has been referred. Since this can introduce a circular dependency if the nameserver referred to is under the domain that it is authoritative of, it is occasionally necessary for the nameserver providing the delegation to also provide the IP address of the next nameserver. This record is called a glue record.
For example, assume that the sub-domain en.wikipedia.org contains further sub-domains (such as something.en.wikipedia.org) and that the authoritative name server for these lives at ns1.something.en.wikipedia.org. A computer trying to resolve something.en.wikipedia.org will thus first have to resolve ns1.something.en.wikipedia.org. Since ns1 is also under the something.en.wikipedia.org subdomain, resolving ns1.something.en.wikipedia.org requires resolving something.en.wikipedia.org which is exactly the circular dependency mentioned above. The dependency is broken by the glue record in the nameserver of en.wikipedia.org that provides the IP address of ns1.something.en.wikipedia.org directly to the requestor, enabling it to bootstrap the process by figuring out where ns1.something.en.wikipedia.org is located.
Wildcard DNS records
DNS also supports wildcard DNS records that will match requests for non-existent domain names. A wildcard DNS record is specified by using a "*" as the left most label (part) of a domain name, e.g. *.example.com. The exact rules about when a wild card will match is s
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