This document has been placed in the public domain by Sam Trenholme

Intoduction to DNS

This document is meant to be an introduction to DNS for someone who has never administrated a DNS server or registered a domain before. Being a part of the MaraDNS package, this tutorial assumes that one is using the MaraDNS package.

What is DNS?

DNS is the method that the internet uses to convert difficult-to-remember numbers, such as '10.17.243.32', in to easy-to-remember names, such as 'www.yahoo.com'. The reason for this conversion is because the underlying protocol for the internet, TCP/IP, uses difficult-to-remember numbers to connect to other computers.

What is a DNS server

A DNS server is a program that performs the DNS conversion from names in to number. There are two kinds of DNS servers out there: MaraDNS is both a recursive and an authoritative DNS server. Whether one needs a recursive or an authoritative DNS server depends on what one is trying to do with dns: Some other documentation is here, including A glossary.