What is DNS
The Domain Name System (DNS) converts internet names into IP addresses. Internet names are the easy to remember, human friendly names that we use to locate websites. IP address are the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that each computer connected to a network is assigned. DNS allows user friendly names to be assigned to an IP address. Without DNS, users would have to remember individual IP addresses to access network resources. DNS means that users can have a name to remember instead of a number. This also has the advantage of allowing the internet name to remain the same even when the IP address of the host server is changed. Since the IP address of a computer is dependant on the location of the computer, if the computer is moved then the IP address will usually change. DNS allows the name to be abstracted from this.
DNS Lookups
DNS Lookups are used to resolve internet names into IP addresses. When a user requests a webpage at a website, for example, www.example.com, a DNS lookup is performed which resolves www.example.com to it's IP address which is 192.0.43.10. For more detail on DNS lookups, read the DNS Lookups article on this website.