Answer

A DNS server houses the IP addresses used to access internet resources. The internet operates via IP address in the format of 255.255.255.255 (i.e. 192.168.002.015). Since those are hard to remember, DNS servers are responsible for translating the user friendly names like www.faqfarm.com to 64.255.154.135. I think there are something like 7 hub DNS servers on the internet that replicate to all the rest (happens constantly).

By the way, if you type "CMD" in the Run box on Windows XP, then "PING www.faqfarm.com". You can see what the IP address is for the website.

Answer

DNS stands for Distributed Name System. A DNS server resolves a name to an IP address, as stated in an earlier answer, but it can also point to multiple IP addresses for load balancing, or for backup servers if one or more is offline or not accepting connections.

Individual organizations may have their own DNS servers for their local Intranet.

Some sites have their own DNS server to switch between subdomains within them. For example, a site such as Blogspot can have subdomains come and go quite frequently. Rather than force every DNS server to update their own databases whenever someone creates a new blog, Blogspot could maintain their own DNS server to resolve names within the blogspot.com domain, e.g., to distinguish between myblog.blogspot.com and yourblog.blogspot.com ... their DNS server would be queried once blogspot.com is resolved, and it would be responsible for resolving myblog vs. yourblog.

What is DNS?

http://www.onlinecomputertips.com/networking/dns.html

First answer by Bob. Last edit by Onlinecomputertips. Contributor trust: 0 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 64 [recommend question]