It is important to know the concept of domain name and DSN to fully understand the principles that govern the hosting of a website. The hosting of a site is essential for its availability as well as its accessibility. A site with quality hosting will load faster, but will also have better security.
What is a domain name?
To fully understand the concept of DNS, it is first necessary to know what a domain name is. The domain name of a website can be interpreted as its postal address on the Internet. It also serves as the identity of the website for Internet users, in other words its name. It is of the form www.monsite.com. The domain name of a site is the means by which Internet users can use to get there. It is important to choose a very explicit domain name. This is to further mark the membership of the site to a particular brand, company, activity or domain so that it is easily identifiable and memorable by Internet users. Before the creation of the DNS, it was necessary to enter the IP address of the computer hosting the site to be able to access its content. Which was not very convenient due to the hard-to-remember format of IP addresses.
What is DNS?
The Domain Name System or DNS was created to replace the TCP/IP system. Indeed, the exponential growth and development of the number of computers connected to the Internet and therefore the number of contents to be shared, the TCP/IP system quickly became obsolete for the management of these. Indeed, with the TCP/IP system, the allocation of the different IP addresses of the different computers and servers had to be done using manual conversion tables. Which is not possible to manage the billions of current websites. The Domain Name System (DNS) not only automates this process, but also prioritizes website addresses. In particular, this made it possible to give a tree structure to the classification of the addresses of current websites. Another major development brought about by the DNS is to have made it possible to use “domain names” instead of IP addresses. More practical, easier to remember and more explicit, but also made it easier to host several sites on the same server.
The Importance of DNS in Website Hosting
To be permanently accessible, a website must be hosted by a server. Otherwise, if you host your site on your own computer, you will have to leave it on 24 hours a day. The link between the domain name and the DNS system is that the latter is a service allowing to make the correspondence between an IP address and a domain name. At the time of the TCP/IP system, an IP address was assigned to a computer or server, only allowing it to provide access to its content. The DNS system, by offering the possibility of using domain names instead of IP addresses, has made it possible to prioritize the content of servers and computers, thus making websites more accessible and more organized, even in the case where several thousands of sites are hosted on the same server or computer.