What Is A Dns Record; Who Manages Your Dns Records; How Does Dns Work - Cobalt Digital Inc COBALT Qube 3 User Manual

Brief history of the Domain Name System (DNS)

What is a DNS record?

People are much more comfortable dealing with names rather than strings of
numbers. A domain name such as "cobalt.com" is much easier to remember than
the IP address which consists of four octets of numbers such as 63.77.128.100.
Domain names must be registered with Root Domain Registration Service; visit
the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) at
http://www.icann.org for a list accredited domain-name registrars.
Computers, on the other hand, prefer numbers to names. Since computers have
the final say when a user is looking for a company Web site, a mechanism is
needed to convert the human-friendly domain name to the computer-friendly IP
address.
DNS records on a DNS server perform this function. The records translate a
domain name to an IP address; a record equates a domain name such as
"cobalt.com" to an IP address such as 207.91.131.30. Once the domain name has
been converted or "resolved" to an IP address, then (and only then) can the user
connect to your Web site.
Without DNS and domain names, the user would be required to remember the IP
address of every site they wanted to visit. With DNS servers and DNS records,
customers and their software can easily remember how to get to your site.

Who manages your DNS records?

Your DNS records can reside on any Cobalt server that has the DNS service
enabled. You or your administrator can easily configure a Cobalt server to act as a
DNS server. To provide DNS service, InterNIC requires a site to maintain both a
primary and a secondary server. Your Cobalt server can act as the primary server
and a DNS server from your Internet service provider (ISP) can act as the
secondary server.

How does DNS work?

The basic method that allows a domain name to direct customers to your Web site
is shown in Figure 118. This diagram describes a request made by a Web browser
as the customer attempts to log on to your Web site.
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