In our latest ‘What is?’ article, we’re going to explore exactly what the Domain Name System or DNS actually is and also what it does as to even get to this website it involved the use of a DNS server.

What is DNS?

DNS effectively is a server or internet service which translates domain names into IP addresses. Behind the scenes the internet operates using IP addresses as if routers, computers, switches and all the equipment used in network had to understand the english language – it wouldn’t work and also it would take a very long time, hence why it uses IP addresses.

So DNS translates IP addresses into domain names, such as google.com – if you visit the IP – 172.217.21.14 it’ll take you to Google’s website. Generally ISPs host their own DNS servers in the core network and customers use that by default, Google also host DNS servers and are constantly running and pretty fast. Google’s DNS servers are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4