Chapter 25

Domain Name System

25.1
 Application Layer

✔ The topmost layer of the OSI model and the TCP/IP model.
✔ In TCP/IP model, it is the combination of top three layers,
application layer, the presentation layer, and the session layer.
✔ It is the layer closest to the end-user, implying that the
application layer and the end-user can interact directly with the
software application.
✔ The application layer isn't an application. Instead, it's a
component within an application that manages ( using a set of
protocols) how data is sent to and received from other devices.

22.2
 TCP/IP and OSI model

2.3
 Application Layer

✔ The application layer is responsible for providing different

types of services to the user.
✔ Domain name service (DNS)
✔ Network Virtual terminal (TELNET)
✔ File Transfer, access and Management ( FTP)
✔ Mail services (SMTP)
✔ Directory services
✔ Encryption and Decryption
✔ Compression and Decompression
22.4
 Domain Name System

✔ The domain name system (DNS) is a naming

database in which internet domain names are
located and translated into Internet Protocol (IP)
addresses.
✔ DNS, or the Domain Name System, translates
human readable domain names to machine
readable IP addresses.

22.5
 Example of using the DNS service

25.6
 How DNS is Work? DNS resolution

✔ To map a name onto an IP address, an application

program calls a library procedure called the resolver,
passing it the name as a parameter.
✔ The resolver sends a query containing the name to a local
DNS server, which looks up the name and returns a
response containing the IP address to the resolver, which
then returns it to the caller.

22.7
 How DNS is Work? DNS resolution

✔ The query and response messages are sent as UDP packets.

✔ After getting the IP address, the program can then establish
a TCP connection with the host or send it UDP packets.
✔ This process of translation and lookup is called DNS
resolution.

22.8
 Domain Name Space

✔ DNS works as a phonebook which map a URL name ( called

domain name) to its IP address.
✔ For small size network, mapping was done by using a host file
had only two columns: name and IP address of system.
✔ Every host could store the host file on its disk and update it
periodically from a master host file.
✔ When a program or a user wanted to map a name to an
address, the host consulted the host file and found the
mapping.

22.9
 Domain Name System

✔ Today, Internet size is so huge, makes it is impossible to

store/ update a host file to relate every address with a
name.
✔ The solution of it is to divide this huge amount of
information into smaller parts and store each part on a
different computer.
✔ In this method, the host that needs mapping can contact
the closest computer holding the needed information.
✔ This method is used by the Domain Name System (DNS).

22.10
 Domain Name Space

✔ The domain name is usually contained in a URL and have a

hierarchical structure.
✔ A domain name is made of multiple parts, called labels.
✔ The domain hierarchy is read from right to left with each
section denoting a subdivision.
✔ In this design the names are defined in an inverted-tree
structure with the root at the top.
✔ The tree can have only 128 levels: level 0 (root) to level 127.

22.11
 Domain names and labels

25.12
 Domain Name Space

✔ Domain name hierarchy is managed by the organization

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN ).
✔ Conceptually, the Internet is divided into over 250 top-level
domains, where each domain covers many hosts.
✔ Each domain is partitioned into subdomains (recursively).
✔ All these domains can be represented by a tree.
✔ The leafs of the tree represent domains; having no subdomains.
✔ A leaf domain may contain a single host, or it may represent a
company and contain thousands of hosts.
22.13
 Domain Name Space

✔ The top-level domains come in two flavors: generic and

countries.
✔ The generic domains introduced via applications ( Functions
applied by the organization) to ICANN.
✔ The country domains include one entry for every country such
as “in” (India), “us” (United states of America).

22.14
 Domain Name Space

25.15
 Generic domain labels

25.16
 Fully Qualified Domain Name

✔ A label, terminated by a null string, is called a FQDN .

✔ Note that the name must end with a null label, but because null
means nothing, the label ends with a dot (.).
✔ An FQDN is a domain that contains the full name of a host.
✔ It contains all labels that uniquely define the name of the host.
For example, the domain name challenger.ate.tbda.edu.
✔ is the FQDN of a computer named challenger installed at the
Advanced Technology Center (ATC) at De Anza College.
✔ A DNS server can only match an FQDN to an address.

22.17
 Partially Qualified Domain Name : Domain Name Space

✔ A label, not terminated by a null string, is called a PQDN.

✔ A PQDN starts from a node, but it does not reach the root.
✔ It is used when the name to be resolved belongs to the same site
as the client. Here the resolver can supply the missing part,
called the suffix, to create an FQDN.
✔ The null suffix defines nothing. This suffix is added when the
user defines an FQDN.

22.18
 FQDN and PQDN

25.19
 DNS IN THE INTERNET

25.20
 Inverse domain

25.21
 Electronic Mail ( E-Mail) (SMTP)

✔ Electronic mail is a communication application to

send & receive messages.
✔ It allows a message to include text, audio, and
video.
✔ It also allows one message to be sent to one or more
recipients.
✔ Every sender and receiver has an address called
E-mail Address.

22.22
 Electronic Mail ( E-Mail) Address
✔ Every e-mail address consists of two parts: a local part and a
domain name, separated by an @ sign.
✔ The local part , a special file, called the user mailbox,
contains all the mail received / stored for retrieval by the
MAA.
✔ The domain name assigned to each mail exchanger(server)
comes from the DNS database.

22.23
 Architecture of E-Mail

22.24
 Architecture of E-Mail

Have Following components;

✔ User Agent (UA) ( one Pair ; sender UA & Receiver UA)
✔ Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) ( Two Pair ; for sender &
Receiver),
✔ Mailbox and
✔ Message Access Agent (one pair MAA)

22.25
 Architecture of E-Mail

22.26
 User Agent (UA)

✔ The user agent is a program that provides a graphical

interface to send and receive messages.
✔ A user agent runs on the same computer on which a user
reads her mail. It may be run only some of the time.
✔ A user agent is a software package (program) that composes,
reads, replies to, forwards and discarding messages.
✔ It also handles mailboxes.
✔ The act of sending new messages into the mail system for
delivery is called mail submission.

22.27
 Functions of User Agent (UA)

✔ A user agent normally creates two mailboxes: an inbox and an

outbox.
✔ Each box is a file with a special format that can be handled by
the user agent.
✔ The inbox/ outbox keeps all the received/ sent e-mails until they
are deleted by the user.

22.28
 Message Transfer Agents (MTA)

✔ The MTAs are system processes and run in the background

on mail server machines and required to be always available.
✔ Their job is to automatically move email through the system
from the originator to the recipient with SMTP.
✔ SMTP is used two times, between the sender and the sender's
mail server and between the two mail servers.
✔ To send mail, a system must have the client MTA, and to
receive mail, a system must have a server MTA.

22.29
 Message Transfer Agents (MTA)

✔ MTA also implement Mailing lists, in which an identical copy

of a message is delivered to everyone on a list of email
addresses.
✔ Linking user agents and message transfer agents are the
concepts of mailboxes and a standard format for email
messages.
✔ Mailboxes store the email that is received for a user. They are
maintained by mail servers.
✔ User agents simply present users with a view of the contents of
their mailboxes.
22.30
 Message Access Agents (MAA)

✔ When client system/ receiver is in off stage, and server MTA has
a mail to deliver it , but unable to deliver (push) it into client
MTA; Then store it into server (Mail Server ) MAA.
✔ MAA is an another set of client/server agents;
✔ The receiver uses an MAA client to retrieve his messages.
✔ The client sends a request to the MAA server, which is running
all the time, and requests the transfer of the messages.

22.31
 Message Access Agents (MAA) : POP and IMAP

✔ The direction of the bulk data is from the server to the client.
✔ Currently two message access protocols are available:
✔ Post Office Protocol, version 3 (POP3) and
✔ Internet Mail Access Protocol, version 4 (IMAP4).

22.32
 Push versus pull in electronic email

26.33
 Difference between MTA(SMTP) and Message Access Agents (MAA)

✔ However, SMTP is not involved in the third stage because

SMTP is a push protocol;
✔ It pushes the message from the client to the server. In other
words, the direction of the bulk: data (messages) is from the
client to the server.
✔ On the other hand, the third stage needs a pull protocol; the
client must pull messages from the server.

22.34
 Post Office Protocol (POP3)

✔ POP3 is simple and limited in functionality.

✔ The client POP3 software is installed on the recipient computer;
the server POP3 software is installed on the mail server.
✔ Mail access starts with the client when the user needs to
download e-mail from the mailbox on the mail server.
✔ The client opens a connection to the server on TCP port 110.
✔ It then sends its user name and password to access the mailbox.
✔ The user can then list and retrieve the mail messages, one by
one.

22.35
 Post Office Protocol (POP3)

✔ POP3 has two modes: the delete mode and the keep mode.
✔ In the delete mode, the mail is deleted from the mailbox after
each retrieval. In the keep mode, the mail remains in the
mailbox after retrieval.
✔ The delete mode is normally used when the user is working at
her permanent computer and can save and organize the
received mail after reading or replying.
✔ The keep mode is normally used when the user accesses her
mail away from her primary computer. The mail is read but
kept in the system for later retrieval and organizing.
22.36