Domain7

Internet 101: DNS, Registrars and IP Addresses Explained

At a glance, navigating to a website is a simple and straight forward process. You type a domain name into a browser and, bipidibopidiboo, you’re at your destination. But what goes on behind the scenes is a complicated relay of communications between several different systems. As your website needs grow and evolve there will come a day when some tech geek is going to ask you about how your web services are configured. Here’s a little guide to help you make sense of the babble coming out of the geek’s mouth.

Domain Name Registrars

When you acquire a domain name, you purchase it from a Domain Name Registrar. The Registrar is responsible for keeping track of two critical pieces of information; who owns the domain name and where the DNS (Domain Name System) servers are located.

You can find the details on your own domain name by doing a “whois lookup”. http://DNSstuff.com provides a good whois lookup tool. Just type your domain name into the whois lookup field and press Enter on your keyboard. You’ll find your Registrar and DNS servers listed in the results. For example, if you registered your domain name through Domain7 your registrar would show Enom Inc. and your DNS servers would likely show something like dns1.domain7.com and dns2.domain7.com.

DNS servers are like the translators of the world wide web. They take human readable domain names, like Domain7.com and translate them into a machine readable IP Addresses like 64.69.90.196. This series of numbers is used by web browsers to find the location of your web services within the amazing network that is the internet. Your DNS servers are responsible for steering traffic to both your website and email system.

In most cases your website hosting provider will also be your DNS provider. When you move your website or email services to another server or provider, you will need to update your DNS records. When you move your website to a new web server you will need to provide a new IP for the DNS A Record. When you move your mail service you will need to update your DNS MX Records. You may even need to use a new DNS provider altogether, in which case you would need to work with your Domain Name Registrar to update your domain name’s DNS server listing.

When making changes to your DNS settings, the change will often take several hours to come into effect. This is because different 3rd party systems around the world store your DNS settings in their records for quick reference and it can take some time for then to update their records. This updating delay is commonly referred to as propagation.

Web Servers

Web servers are responsible for housing the files that make up your website. Website owners who have access to their website files will usually access the servers using the File Transfer Protocol or FTP access.

Email Servers

Arguably the hardest working machines on the internet, email servers are responsible for taking in all the emails directed at your domain names, scanning them for viruses, rejecting spam and sorting them into the proper email accounts. Emails will remain on the email server until they are removed by your email client (outlook, mac mail, thunderbird, etc.) or they are deleted through an online webmail interface.

Your email services may or may not be provided by the same provider as your website hosting services.

Though this is an overly simplified illustration, when we tie it all together and it looks something like this:

Maintaining the relationships between the various systems that keep your website and email running is a complicated process and shouldn’t be tackled haphazardly. Making the wrong move could result in several days of downtime for your website or email services. Most critically, be sure to consult with an expert before making any changes to your DNS or Domain Name Registrar settings.

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