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How DNS Query work
Posted on Apr 17, 2007 under DNS | No Comment

Tags:DNS
Understanding how DNS works needs a bit of an understanding the background process of a DNS Query. The
process of DNS Query involves,
1. An that calls for a name resolution like
2. The DNS Client installed on the
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3. The local DNS server
4. The various DNS servers on the
Lets discuss the process of a DNS Query with a simple example of accessing a on the Internet.
1. When a user types in a website address in Internet Explorer say http://itsyourip.netmonitoring.org/index.php
and clicks GO, Internet Explorer does not directly understand the domain name and wouldnt know where to go.
Hence, picks up the website name http://itsyourip.netmonitoring.org/index.php and pass it onto the DNS client to
resolve the IP Address of the website.
2. The DNS Client also known as the DNS Resolver will try to resolve the IP address from its local resources
which includes the Name to Address mappings in the HOSTS file and its local DNS cache. Normally, most of
the DNS clients are capable of caching the previous DNS query results. The DNS resolver will use these
available local resources and, if it cant find the IP Address will then query a DNS server that it knows to for the
IP Address.
3. The DNS server will directly answer the query if it is the authoritative server for the particular (here
http://itsyourip.netmonitoring.org/index.php) else check its local cache of the previous queries. If it cannot find
the IP Address then will query the DNS servers on the Internet. The process it follows in contacting various DNS
servers on the internet requires a bit of understanding of how it looks at the Domain name. For instance the
website address www.itsyourip.com will be looked at by the DNS server as .com.itsyourip.www
NOTE: Make a note of the "." before com.
The above indicates that . is the ROOT DOMAIN. com is Sub-domain for the ROOT Domain. itsyourip
is a sub-domain for .com www is either a node (no further sub-domains) or further a sub-domain for
"itsyourip".
4. Now, the DNS Server will query one of the root servers requesting for a list of Authoritative servers for
the .COM domain. The Root server will respond with the list of servers addresses hosting the COM domain.
5. The DNS server will pick one from the list and contact that server for a list of Authoritative servers for the
itsyourip domain. The server will respond with the details of the Authoritative server for the itsyourip domain.
6. Now, that the DNS server knows the Authoritative server address for the itsyourip.com domain and hence will
directly contact the server for the IP Address of the host www which belongs to itsyourip.com (called as A
Record). The Authoritative DNS server will then respond with the IP Address or a list of IP Address (if more
than one server hosts the website www.itsyourip.com) for www. Itsyourip.com.
7. This the DNS server then returns back to the DNS client which again passes it onto the DNS application which
initially requested the IP Address information, Internet Explorer in this case. 8. The Application then knows
where to go to fetch the website. How it fetches the correct page etc is being taken care by the HTTP protocol
using host headers etc., That is how a DNS Query works in its simplest terms. In any of the above when we query
for a non-existent domain or a domain or the server that hosts the domain is not available will return an error.
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