How DNS & Domain Names Work
The global, hierarchical phonebook of the internet translating human names into machine IP addresses.
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Step 11. Browser Cache Check
Browser checks local cache and OS hosts file.
If the domain was visited recently within TTL, the cached IP is returned immediately in 0ms.
Step 1 of 4How DNS & Domain Names Work
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DNS turns friendly website names like 'google.com' into computer IP numbers like '142.250.190.46'.
Key Takeaways
- ✓Computers communicate using numeric IP addresses.
- ✓Domain Name System (DNS) is the distributed phonebook of the entire web.
- ✓When you type a URL, your device asks a chain of DNS servers for the right IP in milliseconds.
The Internet's Phone Directory
When you want to call a friend, you tap their name on your phone rather than memorizing their 10-digit number.The internet works the same way: servers have numerical coordinates called IP addresses (like172.217.16.206). The Domain Name System (DNS) is the decentralized global lookup service that translates human-readable domain names (techseum.org) into routing numbers in under 20 milliseconds.
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