On 2/20/2000 9:31 PM, BondTrails@aol.com [mailto:BondTrails@aol.com]
wrote:
>Thanks for the piece of advice. Being a relative internet newbie, what
>exactly is a domain name server? I have heard it before many times but being
>a slave to AOL i never had to worry about such things. My other ISP is from
>my school account and I got as far as knowing that I have a dynamic IP
>address. Do i still need to know where and how to set up the domain name
>server? I guess I could call my school's Computer Support group and ask them.
>
>Bondster!
Yes, you may need to know with your school account, and you apparently
already have....or perhaps your particular ISP's access method sets it up
automatically for you (as AOL does).
A domain name server is how all your internet software knows where on the
internet something is by mapping a domain name to an IP address, i.e. it
lets you use "http://www.info-newt.com/" instead of
"http://209.234.72.21". Both give you the same thing: my web server.
When you tell your web browser to go to "www.info-newt.com", it talks to
the domain name server(s) you have specified in your TCP/IP control panel
to look up the IP address for that domain name. (With AOL, you use DO
their DNS, but you don't have to set it up yourself; they take care of
that for you). Since domain name servers are "distributed", your primary
DNS will probably have to pass the request along to another DNS, and so
on until it finds where "com" is, then where "info-newt.com" is. I
registered JUST the domain name "info-newt.com" and the IP address of my
site's server and domain name server with Network Solutions, the primary
"domain name registrar". Network Solution's DNS tells your system how to
reach MY domain name server which will then tell your software that
"WWW.info-newt.com"'s IP address (it's unique location on the Internet)
is 209.234.72.21. As I said, you don't actually NEED the domain name to
visit my web server at www.info-newt.com. You can also type in
http://209.234.72.21/". But http://www.info-newt.com (or actually, just
http://info-newt.com/) is a lot easier to remember!
Even more, it also lets me change the IP address of www.info-new.com
instantly by changing the address of www.info-newt.com on my domain name
server. You never see the IP address change; www.info-newt.com continues
to work but it's at a totally different place on the Internet. In fact,
my Internet Service provider recently changed the IP address I use for my
server (it was 165.xxx.xxx.xxx) and all I had to do was tell the domain
name servers the new 209.xxx.xx.xx IP address to allow everyone to access
the server at the new IP address.
- Bill
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