University Institute of Engineering

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE &

ENGINEERING
Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Science & Engineering)
Subject Name:Computer Network
Subject Code: 21CSH-256/ 21ITH-256

DISCOVER . LEARN . EMPOWER

 Why we need DNS?
• In the world of networking, computers do not represent by names like
humans do, they represent by numbers because that is how computers
and other similar devices talk and identify with each other over a
network, which is by using numbers such as IP addresses. 
• Humans on the other hand are accustomed to using names instead of
numbers, whether is talking directly to another person or identifying a
country, place, or things, humans identify with names instead of
numbers. So in order to bridge the communication gap between
computers and humans and make the communication of a lot easier
networking engineers developed DNS.
• DNS resolves names to numbers, to be more specific it resolves
domain names to IP addresses. So if you type in a web address in your
web browser, DNS will resolve the name to a number because the only
thing computers know are numbers. 
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 Why we need DNS?
• If you wanted to go to a certain website you would
open up your web browser and type in domain
name of that website. Let us use
www.example.com . Now technically you really do
not have to type in google.com to retrieve Google
web page, you can just type in IP address instead
if you already know what google’s IP address is,
but since we are not accustomed to memorizing
and dealing with numbers, especially when there
are millions of websites on Internet, we can just
type in domain name instead and let DNS convert
it to an IP address for us. 
• So back to our example, when you type
www.example.com on your web browser DNS
server will search through its cache to find a
matching IP address for that domain name, and
when it finds it it will resolve that domain name to
IP address of Google web site, and once that is
done then your computer is able to communicate
with a Google web server and retrieve the
webpage. 

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 DNS-Domain Name System
• An application layer protocol defines how the application processes running
on different systems, pass the messages to each other.

• DNS stands for Domain Name System.

• DNS is a directory service that provides a mapping between the name of a host on
the network and its numerical address.DNS is required for the functioning of the
internet. Each node in a tree has a domain name, and a full domain name is a
sequence of symbols specified by dots. DNS is a service that translates the domain
name into IP addresses. This allows the users of networks to utilize user-friendly
names when looking for other hosts instead of remembering the IP addresses.
• For example, suppose the FTP site at EduSoft had an IP address of
132.147.165.50, most people would reach this site by specifying
ftp.EduSoft.com. Therefore, the domain name is more reliable than IP
address.

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 NAME SPACE

To be unambiguous, the names assigned to machines must be

carefully selected from a name space with complete control over
the binding between the names and IP addresses.
To have a hierarchical name space, a domain name space was
designed. In this design the names are defined in an inverted-tree
structure with the root at the top. The tree can have only 128
levels: level 0 (root) to level 127.

25.5
Figure 25.2 Domain name
space

25.6
Figure 25.3 Domain names and
labels

25.7
Figure 25.4 FQDN and PQDN

25.8
Figure 25.5 Domains

25.9
 DISTRIBUTION OF NAME SPACE

The information contained in the domain name space

must be stored. However, it is very inefficient and also
unreliable to have just one computer store such a huge
amount of information. In this section, we discuss the
distribution of the domain name space.

25.10
Hierarchy of name servers

25.11
Zones and domains

25.12
Note

A primary server loads all information

from the disk file; the secondary server
loads all information from
the primary server.

When the secondary downloads

information from the primary, it is called
zone transfer.
25.13
 DNS IN THE INTERNET

• DNS is a protocol that

can be used in different
platforms. In the
Internet, the domain
name space (tree) is
divided into three
different sections:
generic domains,
country domains, and
the inverse domain.

25.14
Generic domains

25.15
Table 25.1 Generic domain labels

25.16
Figure 25.10 Country
domains

25.17
Figure 25.11 Inverse domain

25.18
 RESOLUTION
Mapping a domain name to an IP Address is known as Name-Address
Resolution. The Domain Name Server (DNS) Resolver performs this
operation by consulting name servers. In order to find a particular DNS
the requesting host place it’s query to the Local DNS Server with a
mapping request. If it has the information, the resolver is satisfied else
the resolver is referred to other servers or other servers are asked to
provide the information. After the resolver, gets the response, it checks
whether the response is correct or not. If the response is correct, the
response is passed to the process that requested it, else the name
query fails.
A resolution can be of two types – iterative and recursive.

25.19
 Recursive resolution
• Here, client requires the Local Server to give either
the requested mapping or an error message. A DNS
Query is generated by the application program to
the resolver to fetch the destination IP Address. The
Query is then forward to the local DNS Server. If it
knows the IP Address, it sends a response to the
resolver. Assuming, it does not know the IP Address,
it sends the query to the root name server.
• The root name server contains information of about
at least one server of Top Level Domain. The query
is then sent to the respective Top-Level Domain
server. If it contains the mapping, the response is
sent back to the root server and then to host’s local
server. If it doesn’t contain the mapping, it should
contain the IP Address of destination’s local DNS
Server. The local DNS server knows the destination
host’s IP Address. The information is then sent back
to the top-level domain server, then to the root
server and then to the host’s Local DNS Server and
finally to the host.

25.20
 Iterative resolution
• The main difference between iterative and recursive
resolution is that, here each server that does not
know the mapping sends the IP Address of the next
server to the one requested it. Here, client allows the
server to return the best answer it can give as a
match or as a referral. A DNS Query is generated by
the application program to the resolver to fetch the
destination IP Address. The Query is then forward to
the local DNS Server. Assuming, it does not know
the IP Address, it sends the query to the root name
server.
• The root name server returns the IP Address of the
Top-Level Domain Server to the Local Server. The
Top-Level Domain server is contacted by Local
Server and it returns either the IP of the destination
host or its local DNS Server. If it returns the server’s
address, then by contacting the destination’s Local
DNS Server, we get the IP Address of the destination
host. The response/mapping is then passed from
host’s local DNS server to the resolver and then
finally to the host.

25.21
 References
• https://www.gatevidyalay.com/tag/application-layer-protocols-pp
t/
• https://www.javatpoint.com/computer-network-application-layer
• https://www.tutorialspoint.com/data_communication_computer_
network/application_layer_introduction.htm
• Data Communication and Networks by Behrouz A. Forouzan

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