What is DNS?

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a critical internet protocol that translates domain names into IP addresses. This allows users to access websites and other resources using human-readable names instead of complicated numerical addresses. While there is a plethora of information about DNS available online, here is a brief overview of the key concepts.

DNS operates using a network of servers that store lists of domain names and their corresponding IP addresses. When a user types in a domain name in their browser, the browser sends a request to a DNS server to retrieve the associated IP address. The browser then uses the IP address to connect to the website.

To speed up this process, browsers will store a local copy of DNS records for websites that users have visited recently. This allows the browser to retrieve the IP address from the cache instead of having to query a DNS server every time the site is accessed. However, cached records eventually expire and must be refreshed.

There are two reasons why changes to DNS settings can take time to propagate throughout the system. First, cached records may persist in the browser or on intermediate servers, delaying the retrieval of updated records. Second, DNS records are stored on multiple distributed servers around the world, so changes may take time to propagate to all the servers. Therefore, it is important to be patient when making changes to DNS settings and to take caching into account when troubleshooting DNS issues.