Explainer

What is DNS and why it matters for browsing

Technology · approved

A concise explainer describing how DNS translates familiar website names into network addresses and why small DNS problems can disrupt browsing.

How it works

DNS
Domain Name System, the network service that maps human-friendly names such as example.com to machine-readable IP addresses.

Without DNS, users would need to remember numeric addresses for every site. DNS keeps browsing simple by converting website names to the correct addresses behind the scenes.

  1. A browser requests a domain name.
  2. A DNS resolver checks local caches and upstream records.
  3. The resolver returns the matching IP address for the requested website.