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Zone DNS, What is it?

Jul 26, 2021Information

What is Zone DNS

All about DNS Zone

DNS Zone / Yellow Pages, that’s about the same. Discover this very explicit content on the DNS zone! And we promise you, the domain name system will have no secret for you after reading this article!
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DNS and domain name

 

Before digging into the definition of the DNS zone, we must explain what is the “Domain Name System”.

In short, this is a sort of web-wide “Yellow Pages”.

In the “real” world, when you look for contact details, you go to a directory like the yellow page or the city township address directory.

In the virtual world, it is your computer which – once connected to the internet – performs a similar process.

To combine computers in a network, it seems like it would be sufficient to just use an Ethernet cable. But without help, the computer systems aren’t capable of exchanging data packets and so can’t establish a data connection. That task is instead carried out by the network protocols.

In order for two computers to exchange on an IP network, a network protocol must assign them an IP address which is a serie of numbers.

However, since humans remember names better than numbers, computer scientists have introduced an additional system to ensure conversion. This computer program is the DNS.

Without it, all Internet users would have to remember the IP address of all the sites they want to connect to. Which would be way more difficult than remembering all our passwords.

domain name and zone DNS Dotradio

What about the DNS zone in all of this?

A DNS zone is a part of the DNS namespace. It is managed by a specific organization (usually the registrant). As part of a tree hierarchy, it can include several DNS subdomains (examples: www.mysite.radio, mail.mysite.radio, …). Be careful, do not confuse “DNS zone” and “domain name”. A DNS zone is usually defined for a domain name.

How DNS works

The registration of a domain name is done on a “registrar” website. These registrars manage the domain name requests and registrations. They act between the domain name applicants and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Better known by the acronym ICANN. This entity (initially managed by US) controls all the Top Level Domains (.us , .fr, .uk, .com, .net, .org, …. ) including .radio! The ICANN ensures that the registries of all TLDs manage well their domains and monitor the main servers of the DNS worldwide. It is therefore easy to understand that DNS is essential in the functioning of the Internet. A real giant directory. There is no single DNS server that centralizes all directories, since this would be technically impractical because there are a lot of them. Instead, there are a large number of DNS servers designed to store all the DNS records on the web.

How does Registering DNS works

Any computer looking to know an IP address or a name can request it to its closer DNS server. Here is a simple example:
Zone DNS explanation Scheme
In this example, the user wants to go to the Amazon web site www.amazon.com On his browser, he inputs in the address bar the url www.amazon.com The browser asks to the user’s computer to resolve this into an IP address. To achieve this, the computer contacts its DNS server to get the IP address by providing it with the name. The DNS server will answer with the internet address (providing that the name is valid). The information will be forwarded to the browser. Having now the IP address, the browser knows how to contact the Amazon web site to get the web page contents. Often, this is a little bit more complicated as the Computer’s DNS server does not have itself the information about the IP address. It must ask itself to another DNS server higher in the hierarchy of the DNS system.
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The detailed steps of a DNS search

Sending a DNS request works like this:

  1. A DNS request is sent when you try to connect to any website.
  2. The computer is scanning the local DNS cache. When a site is visited, its address is there.
  3. If the IP address is not in the cache, DNS consults a DNS server in relation to it (from the associated DNS zone).
  4. The related DNS server has its own cache. If it has an IP address, it sends it immediately.
  5. If the IP address is not found, TLD name servers may send the DNS request in the correct direction.
  6. TLD (Top Level Domain) name servers identify the location of the name server managing the site you are looking for. The website responds with the requested IP address. The related DNS server stores it in the local DNS cache, before sending it to your computer.
  7. DNS stores the IP address in the local cache, with a predefined lifetime (called TTL (Time To Live)). This period of validity fixes the recording of the IP address in the cache. When this has expired, the request for the same site follows this path again.

And all this process happens in a few seconds or less that we usually don’t notice, thanks technology!

Last Words

We hope that you understand a little bit better DNS, DNS zone and domain names.

We are the Registry of .radio, but we sell also .radio domains as a registrar on www.register.radio.
So, we know all about DNS and we are specialized with the one we provide: .radio.

You can also go through other registrars such as OVH for example that will be able to provide you with .radio domain names as well as many other domains.

We hope this article has clarified the nature and use of DNS, DNS zones, and domains so that you know better what is going on with your .radio domain name!

The DotRadio Team

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