Introduction to DNS and Name Servers

The Domain Name System (DNS) is the mechanism that translates Internet domain names preferred by users, such as example.com, into IP addresses used by computers, such as 10.0.0.1. This translation is required because the network layer of the Internet uses IP addresses to identify domains; however, Internet users prefer to use names rather than IP addresses. More about how the Domain Name System works.

About DNS name servers

To perform domain name and IP address translations efficiently, DNS has a distributed architecture composed of many hierarchical DNS name servers. Each DNS name server is responsible for both name-to-IP-address translations (called forward lookups) and IP-address-to-name translations (called reverse lookups). Each DNS name server manages the lookups for domain name spaces. In DNS, these domain name spaces are referred to as zones. The term zone is used to denote information, such as host records, about a domain.

To make a domain or zone accessible to the Internet, the domain name and IP address need to be registered with at least two DNS name servers: a Master DNS server and a Slave DNS server (or backup name server). You can use the Parallels Pro Control Panel server or any external server as a master or slave name server. Using Parallels Pro Control Panel as a master or slave name server reduces administrative overheads as Parallels Pro Control Panel automatically creates zones for any site that is created on Parallels Pro Control Panel.

For complete information on DNS, we recommend the following books.