In response to my article about clearing the DNS Cache on your PC (click here to read that article), I received a comment that made a pretty good point.
“It would be helpful when using an abbreviation to spell it out the first time. For example, what does DNS mean or stand for? Thanks for what you are doing for us computer neophytes.”
You’re absolutely right! Thanks for the tip.
DNS is short for Domain Name Server
DNS is the Internet service that translates names like http://www.cynmackley.com into IP address that hosts the site.
Domain names are words since those are easy for people to remember and type. But the Internet actually functions based on numeric IP addresses. My website could be http://www.yoursitehere.com but the IP address might be 192.837.640.1.
DNS is actually an entire network. If one DNS server doesn’t have the needed information to do the translation, it just keeps asking other servers until it gets what it needs.