There are plenty of domain name services out there and the number continues to grow by the day. If you are reading this, it’s more likely than not that you have an interest in registering good domain names or in learning a little more about how the web works; and in either case, you have come to the right place. Today, we’ll cover converting a domain name to IP address; these are 2 terms you’ve probably heard about before.
If we are discussing how to convert a domain name to IP address, we’ll need to talk about Domain Name Servers or DNS as they are usually known. These are the servers which translate the IP addresses of sites to their domain names. DNS is a crucial part of the web; an IP address is a 32-bit string of numbers with periods used as separators.
Since it’s hard (if not impossible) for people to recall all these numbers, domain names were invented – since it’s far easier to type, for example, www.google.com into your browser’s address bar than it is to type 72.14.204.103. You can think of IP addresses as the “street address” of websites, with the domain name being more easily comprehensible directions to these addresses.
Apart from providing the invaluable service of converting a domain name to IP address, a DNS server also frees internet users from having to know the precise IP address or location of the host computer which hosts the site which they are trying to reach. It also permits websites to be moved from one web server to another (and from one web host to another, for that matter) while users can continue to reach the site by simply typing its domain name into their browser.
DNS servers use a distributed database to look up the domain names associated with IP addresses when they receive requests for this information from web browsers and other applications using TCP/IP protocols. Not only do DNS servers provide these functions, but also handle email routing; rather than the user having to type in the destination IP address for the email server they are sending a message to, they can simply type in the email address, with the DNS system handling the rest of the process.
Once an email message is sent or a webpage accessed through a browser, the address will be resolved through a DNS lookup – and as far as the user is concerned, it’s a totally opaque process which actually makes it easier for everybody concerned.
The writer, Joshua Nikenya, has over the years been helping hundreds of people solve various domain name problems that they had encountered. Are you looking for information on how to make money with domain names? Visit his website for this and much more, including details on how to do free domain name registration.
