Overview of DNS

The Domain Name System (DNS) is the mechanism by which a domain name is automatically translated into its corresponding IP address for use by the Internet.

The Domain Name System (DNS) uses the DNS service to make these translations or lookups.

Lookups

The DNS maintains a database that enables resolution of domain names to their corresponding IP addresses (forward lookup) and IP addresses to their corresponding domain names (reverse lookup).

Zones

A zone is a section of the domain name space that is represented by the data stored on a particular name server. The name server has authority over that particular zone, or the particular section of the domain name space described by that data. The DNS server manages the lookups for one or more domain name spaces.

Records

The DNS server also maintains a list of all domain names and their associated IP addresses. The elements on this list are known as records. Once you have created a zone, you add records to that zone. A zone can contain the following types of records:

The SOA record: