All About Domain Name System and DNS Servers

DNS, Host Name, DNS Servers

by Bernard Kohan

What is DNS?

DNS stands for Domain Name System which is a hierarchical naming system created for translating host names to IP addresses. For example www.comentum.com translates to 208.66.56.34

What is a Host Name?

A Host Name is simply a name identifying a computer on a network or a domain on the Internet.

Below are some examples of host names on the Internet:
www.comentum.com (host name for Comentum's web server)
www.google.com (host name for Google's web server)
mail.comentum.com (host name for Comentum's email server)

What is a DNS Server?

A DNS Server is a server computer that provides DNS services. For example, if a request is sent to a DNS Server to translate www.comentum.com, the server returns the IP address of 208.66.56.33. A DNS Server does not require much processing power since it is just a simple database server for translating domain host names to their corresponsing IP addresses.What is DNS Services.

DNS Services is a monthly service for hosting your domain and host names for your domain on a DNS Server. This service will identify and serve IP information about where your Website, email, FTP and other services are hosted.

(DNS service is usually combined with website hosting and email services.)

The cost is usually included with website hosting.