Domain Name Service
Each Node on the Internet is connected to every other node by a Logical Address
(IP Address). However, IP addresses are not used by the users to identify the
machines on the internet. They use Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) which are
specific names tied to an IP or a bunch of different IPs. Thus, the need to translate
URL to an IP arises. This is solved by the DNS.
Name Space
To maintain unambiguity, the names must be selected from a set of unique names
mapping to unique addresses.
Flat Name Space
A name is assigned only to one address.
Suitable for small systems.
Not usable on the Internet.
Hierarchical Name Space
Name is made of several parts.
First may refer to nature of organization, second may be the name of the
organization, third may define department, etc.
Parts of the name may overlap but the overall name is different.
Organization can add prefix/suffix to specify their hosts/resources.
Domain Name Space
Tree like structure.
Domain Name Service 1
A Sample Domain Name Space
Label is a string of up to 63 character assigned to every node. The root node has
an empty label.
Domain Name is a sequence of labels separated by "." from the node up to the
root. Every node has a domain name.
A domain is a sub-tree in this domain name space.
Distribution of Name Space
All the information cannot be stored in one place.
Hierarchy of Servers
One host acts as root and has multiple hosts containing information about the
multiple domains that exists on level 1 of tree. These domains are further divided
into subdomains.
Zone
The entire hierarchy is not stored on a single system and is divided. So the hosts
present under a given host for which the aforementioned host is responsible are
collectively known as the zone. If the domain in a zone is not further divided into
subdomains, then domain and zone refer to the same thing.
💡 The root server has the entire tree as its zone.
Domain Name Service 2
DNS on the Internet
The Domain Name Space tree is divided into 3 different sections:
1. Generic Domains: Define registered hosts according to their generic
behaviour. Example- aero for Airlines, biz for Business, com for Commercial,
edu for Education, etc.
2. Country Domains: 2 character abbreviation for country name as domain.
3. Inverse Domain: Used to map an address to a name (useful when only a finite
number of IP addresses have access to data on the target IP and the name of
the message sender has to be checked against the names of authorized
clients).
Domain Name Service 3
