Domain Name System DNS 1 DNS Domain Name

Domain Name System (DNS) 1

DNS: Domain Name System Internet hosts: – – IP address (32 bit) - used for addressing datagrams “name”, e. g. , www. yahoo. com - used by humans DNS: provides translation between host name and IP address – – 2 distributed database implemented in hierarchy of many name servers Distributed for scalability & reliability

DNS Services l l Hostname to IP address translation Host aliasing – l l Mail server aliasing Load distribution – 3 Canonical and alias names Replicated Web servers: set of IP addresses for one canonical name

Names are valuable! 4 A New York Times article from August 22, 2000

Growth of DNS registrations 5

Names Hierarchy in DNS l hostname = “dot” separated concatenation of domain names along path toward the root – – 6 – unc. edu cs. unc. edu classroom. cs. unc. edu

DNS Infrastructure root DNS server l l Host at cis. poly. edu wants IP address for gaia. cs. umass. edu Infrastructure: – – – 7 Client resolver Local DNS server Authoritative DNS Server Root DNS Server Top-Level Domain DNS Server 2 3 4 TLD DNS server 5 local DNS server dns. poly. edu 1 8 requesting host 7 6 authoritative DNS server dns. cs. umass. edu cis. poly. edu gaia. cs. umass. edu

Distributed, Hierarchical Database Root DNS Servers com DNS servers ca DNS servers TLD edu DNS servers Servers usask. ca poly. edu umass. edu yahoo. com amazon. com ucalgary. ca DNS servers DNS servers l 8 Root servers and TLD servers typically do not contain hostname to IP mappings; they contain mappings for locating authoritative servers.

DNS: Root name servers l l contacted by local name server that can not resolve name root name server: – – – 9 contacts authoritative name server if name mapping not known gets mapping returns mapping to local name server

DNS: Root name servers 10

TLD and Authoritative Servers l Top-level domain (TLD) servers: responsible for com, org, net, edu, etc, and all top-level country domains uk, fr, ca, jp. – – l Authoritative DNS servers: organization’s DNS servers, providing authoritative hostname to IP mappings for organization’s servers (e. g. , Web and mail). – 11 Network solutions maintains servers for com TLD Educause for edu TLD Can be maintained by organization or service provider

TLD servers 12

Local Name Server l Each ISP (residential ISP, company, university) has one. – l When a host makes a DNS query, query is sent to its local DNS server – – 13 Also called “default name server” Acts as a proxy, forwards query into hierarchy. Reduces lookup latency for commonly searched hostnames

Recursive queries root DNS server recursive query: l l puts burden of name resolution on contacted name server heavy load? iterated query: l l 2 3 7 local DNS server dns. poly. edu contacted server 1 8 replies with name of server to contact “I don’t know this requesting host name, but ask this cis. poly. edu server” 6 TLD DNS server 5 4 authoritative DNS server dns. cs. umass. edu gaia. cs. umass. edu 14

DNS: caching and updating records l once (any) name server learns mapping, it caches mapping – cache entries timeout (disappear) after some time – TLD servers typically cached in local name servers l l 15 Thus root name servers not often visited update/notify mechanisms under design by IETF – RFC 2136 – http: //www. ietf. org/html. charters/dnsind-charter. html

DNS records DNS: distributed db storing resource records (RR) l Type=A – – l name is hostname value is IP address Type=NS – – 16 l name is domain (e. g. foo. com) value is IP address of l authoritative name server for this domain Type=CNAME – name is alias name for some “canonical” (the real) name www. ibm. com is really servereast. backup 2. ibm. com – value is canonical name Type=MX – value is name of mailserver associated with name

DNS protocol, messages DNS protocol : query and reply messages, both with same message format msg header l l 17 identification: 16 bit # for query, reply to query uses same # flags: – query or reply – recursion desired – recursion available – reply is authoritative

DNS protocol, messages Name, type fields for a query RRs in reponse to query records for authoritative servers additional “helpful” info that may be used 18

Inserting records into DNS l l Example: just created startup “Network Utopia” Register name networkuptopia. com at a registrar (e. g. , Network Solutions) – – Need to provide registrar with names and IP addresses of your authoritative name server (primary and secondary) Registrar inserts two RRs into the com TLD server: (networkutopia. com, dns 1. networkutopia. com, NS) (dns 1. networkutopia. com, 212. 1, A) l l 19 Put in authoritative server Type A record for www. networkuptopia. com and Type MX record for networkutopia. com How do people get the IP address of your Web site?

A Real DNS Answer 20

A Real DNS Answer (cont. ) 21

A Real DNS Answer (cont. ) 22

Example (cont. ) 23

Another Example 24

Summary l F gets 270, 000+ hits per day – l l The Verisign TLD servers answer 5, 000, 000 queries per day Clearly the DNS would collapse without: – – – l 25 Other servers have comparable load Hierarchy Distributed processing Caching If DNS fails, Internet services stop working!