The Domain Name System, or DNS, acts as the internet's directory service. Every website has a numerical IP address, but remembering strings of numbers for every site you visit would be impractical. DNS solves this by translating easy-to-remember domain names, like example.com, into the IP addresses that computers actually use to find each other. When you type a web address into your browser, a DNS query is sent to a DNS server, which looks up the matching IP address and returns it. Your browser then uses that IP address to connect to the correct server and load the page. This lookup happens in a fraction of a second, usually without you noticing, every single time you visit a website.
What Does the DNS Do?
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