A Regular Person’s Guide Domain Names, DNS, and Websites

I get this question a lot from colleagues and friends who work in what I’ll call “tech-adjacent” fields (digital marketing being the most frequent example in my case).

To non-tech nerds, conceptualizing how these three things work together can be a bit of a challenge. This post is meant to make it clear (or, clear enough that regular folks can make sense of it).

(Nerds: yes, I know I’m omitting certain details and glossing over a lot of complexity. This isn’t meant to be exhaustive.)

The best analogy I’ve been able to come up with goes like this…

Domain Names

Domain names are like people. Every single person is unique, as is every domain name. Let’s call our example person Jeff.

Domain Name System (DNS)

The Domain Name System (DNS) is like a wallet that belongs to a person. It contains information about Jeff, including the location of his house (an IP address). There’s lots of other info in there, too (his phone number, maybe his social security card if he’s insane), but we’ll keep it simple.

In this analogy, every single person (domain name) has a wallet (a set of DNS records called a “zone”). It might be empty or absolutely packed with information about the person. But for our purposes, there’s no such thing as a person without a wallet. No registered domain can exist without a DNS zone.

Websites

Websites are houses. Jeff lives in a house and that house has a physical address.

How They Work Together

If I want to know where Jeff lives, I can pull out Jeff’s wallet (DNS records) and look at his driver’s license. I’ll find his address, then I can go to his house (IP address of his website).

When I want to visit Jeff’s website, the process looks like this:

  • I type jeff.com into my web browser and hit Enter.
  • The browser sends a request to a huge database of wallets (DNS server) and asks for the address in Jeff’s wallet.
  • The database sends back his address (IP address of his website), then my browser sends a request directly to that address. The site sends back the content and I gleefully browse it.

Now, let’s say Jeff gets a sweet promotion at work and can afford to move to a new house (he changes his website hosting company or moves the site to a different server). Once he’s moved, he goes to the DMV and gets a new license with his new address (updating his DNS records with the new site location). No, when anybody asks his wallet for his address, they’ll get the new one.

Jeff’s wallet can contain lots of other information beyond his address. Where to send his mail, aliases he may use (Jeffery, The Jeffster), and his DNA so people can confirm he’s the Jeff they want (there are lots of Jeffs). We’re not covering any of that stuff here because it’s beyond the scope of a basic explanation—just know that this really is the tip of the iceberg.

That’s it. Imperfect analogy—aren’t they all?—but hopefully sufficient to at least make the basics clear. Leave a comment if I missed the mark.

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