The response to this is 1 or more IP addresses for TLD servers. First, the resolver communicates with a DNS Root Server, to find out which servers hold information for the Top-Level Domain (TLD) part of your DNS query, e.g.com or.When the DNS resolver receives such a query, it communicates with several types of servers in a chain to find out which DNS server holds the information to answer the query. When you visit a URL (a website address) in your browser, your device sends a DNS query to the DNS resolvers it knows about via your device's network settings, and the DNS resolver responds with the IP addresses on the internet where that website is located. We explain this process in the section below. What is a DNS Server?ĭNS stands for Domain Name System and is comparable to a phone directory for the internet.Ī DNS server is a computer server containing a directory of fully-qualified domain names (FQDN) and the corresponding public IP addresses for that domain.Ī fully-qualified domain name is a hostname, a domain name, and a top-level domain (TLD) if the format of, and is used as a human-friendly way to identify devices/computers on the internet to communicate with.ĭNS servers translate domain names into their IP addresses, eventually letting you view the web content you want to access. 8.8.8.8), the server sends your requests onto other servers (with different IP addresses) in the company’s network to avoid server congestion.
This is because when you use an organization’s DNS server (e.g. If you’ve changed device or router DNS settings to use a specific DNS server, for example a Google (8.8.8.8) or a Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) server, you may see a slightly different DNS address.
The tool (above) does this by analyzing how your DNS requests are processed on the internet.