Data Communication and Networking – Domain Name System Study Notes

• The Domain Name System (DNS) is a client/server application that identifies each
  host on the Internet with a unique user-friendly name.
• DNS organizes the name space in a hierarchical structure to decentralize the
  responsibilities involved in naming.
• DNS can be pictured as an inverted hierarchical tree structure with one root node at the top and a maximum of 128 levels.
• Each node in the tree has a domain name.
• A domain is defined as any subtree of the domain name space.
• The name space information is distributed among DNS servers. Each server has jurisdiction over its zone.
• A root server’s zone is the entire DNS tree.
• A primary server creates, maintains, and updates information about its zone.
• A secondary server gets its information from a primary server.
• The domain name space is divided into three sections: generic domains, country domains, and inverse domain.
• There are 14 generic domains, each specifying an organization type.
• Each country domain specifies a country.
• The inverse domain finds a domain name for a given IP address. This is called address-to-name resolution.
• Name servers, computers that run the DNS server program, are organized in a hierarchy.
• The DNS client, called a resolver, maps a name to an address or an address to a name.
• In recursive resolution, the client sends its request to a server that eventually returns a response.
• In iterative resolution, the client may send its request to multiple servers before getting an answer.
• Caching is a method whereby an answer to a query is stored in memory (for a limited time) for easy access to future requests.
• A fully qualified domain name (FQDN) is a domain name consisting of labels beginning with the host and going back through each level to the root node.
• A partially qualified domain name (PQDN) is a domain name that does not include all the levels between the host and the root node.
• There are two types of DNS messages: queries and responses.
• There are two types of DNS records: question records and resource records.
• Dynamic DNS (DDNS) automatically updates the DNS master file.
• DNS uses the services ofUDP for messages of less than 512 bytes; otherwise, TCP is used.