What DNS Solves
The Domain Name System translates human friendly names like example dot com into IP addresses that routers understand.
The Resolution Path
When a name is not cached, a recursive resolver walks a hierarchy:
- The root servers point to the right top level domain servers.
- The TLD servers for com point to the domain's authoritative servers.
- The authoritative server returns the final record.
The resolver then hands the answer back to your application and caches it.
Record Types and TTL
- An A record maps a name to an IPv4 address.
- An AAAA record maps to an IPv6 address.
- A CNAME aliases one name to another.
- The TTL sets how long a record may be cached, trading freshness against load.
Caching at the browser, operating system, and resolver layers means most lookups never reach the authoritative server.
Key idea
DNS resolves a name by walking root, TLD, and authoritative servers, with TTL controlled caching cutting most of that work.