Domain
Name
System
DNS Domain Name System
The domain name system is usually used to
translate a host name into an IP address
Domain names comprise a hierarchy so that
names are unique, yet easy to remember.
DNS introduction
People: many identifiers:
SSN, name, passport #
Internet hosts, routers:
IP address (32 bit) - used for addressing datagrams
“name”, e.g., cs.pub.ro by humans
Map between IP addresses and name ?
Domain Name System:
distributed database
implemented in hierarchy of many name servers
application-layer protocol
host, routers, name servers to communicate to resolve names
(address/name translation)
Note: core Internet function, implemented as application-layer protocol
Complexity at network’s “edge”
In The Beginning...
Early host database was a text file
Operational nightmare!
Rate of change in file was growing exponentially
NIC staff overwhelmed
Everyone copied it (nightly!) to get current version
Network overwhelmed
Many opportunities for errors
And we experienced many of them
Fate sharing model wrong
Affected parties couldn’t change database
DNS begining
…. there was the HOSTS.TXT file
Before DNS (until 1985), the name-to-IP address
was done by downloading a single file (hosts.txt)
from a central server with FTP
Names in hosts.txt are not structured.
The hosts.txt file still works on most operating systems.
It can be used to define local names.
/etc/hosts [Unix]
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts [Windows]
A centrally-maintained file, distributed to all hosts
on the Internet
hosts.txt doesn't scale
✗Huge file
✗Needs frequent copying to ALL hosts
✗Consistency
✗Always out-of-date
✗Name uniqueness
✗Single point of administration
Naming
How do we efficiently locate resources?
DNS: name -> IP address
• Challenge
How do we scale these to the wide area?
Obvious Solutions
Why not centralize DNS?
Single point of failure
Traffic volume
Distant centralized database
Single point of update
Why not use /etc/hosts?
Original Name to Address Mapping
Flat namespace
/etc/hosts
SRI kept main copy
Downloaded regularly
Count of hosts was increasing: machine per domain -> machine per
user
Many more downloads
Many more updates
Domain Name System Goals
Basically a wide-area distributed database
Scalability
Decentralized maintenance
Robustness
Global scope
Names mean the same thing everywhere
Don’t need
Atomicity
Strong consistency
The domain name system was born
(Paul Mockapetris, RFC1034/1035)
DNS is a Distributed Database for holding name
to IP address (and other) information
Distributed:
Shares the administration
Shares the load
Robustness and performance through:
Replication
Caching
A critical piece of Internet infrastructure
Conceptually, programmers can view the DNS
database as a collection of millions of host entry structures:
/* DNS host entry structure */
struct hostent {
char *h_name; /* official domain name of host */
char **h_aliases; /* null-terminated array of domain names */
int h_addrtype; /* host address type (AF_INET) */
Int h_length; /* length of an address, in bytes */
char **h_addr_list; /* null-terminated array of in_addr structs */
};
in_addr is a struct consisting of 4-byte IP address
Functions for retrieving host entries from DNS:
gethostbyname: query key is a DNS host name.
gethostbyaddr: query key is an IP address.
Host name structure
Each host name is made up of a sequence of labels
separated by periods.
Each label can be up to 63 characters
The total name can be at most 255 characters.
Alphanumeric characters a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and -
Examples:
pub.ro
cs.pub.ro
The most important element of address is on the right
(TLD – top level domain)
Domain Name Space
Label
Each label can be up to 63 characters
Domain Name
Sequence of the labels separated by dots
Domain name space
Children of the node have different labels
Domain names and labels
DNS Name hierarchy
DNS hierarchy can be
represented by a tree
Root and top-level
domains are
administered by an
Internet central name Managed
registration authority by Univ T
(ICANN)
Managed by
Below top-level ECE Dept.
domain, administration
of name space is
delegated to
organizations
Each organization can
delegate further
Domain name system
.
Each node in the DNS tree
represents a DNS name
Each branch below a node is a edu
DNS domain.
DNS domain can contain
hosts or other domains
(subdomains) virginia.edu
Example: www.virginia.edu cs.virginia.edu
DNS domains are
., edu, virginia.edu,
cs.virginia.edu
neon.cs.virginia.edu
Domain names
Hosts and DNS domains are named based on their position in the domain tree
Every node in the DNS domain tree can be identified by a unique Fully Qualified
Domain Name (FQDN). The FQDN gives the position in the DNS tree.
A FQDN consists of labels (“cs”,“virginia”,”edu”) separated by a period (“.”)
There can be a period (“.”) at the end.
Each label can be up to 63 characters long
FQDN contains characters, numerals, and dash character (“-”)
FQDNs are not case-sensitive
DNS Messages
Header
Question Section
Answer Section
Authoritative Section
Additional Information Section
FQDN and PQDN
FQDN – Full qualified domain name (the name
must end with a null label – the label ends with
dot (.)
PQDN – Partially qualified domain name
Domains
The domain name for a host is the sequence of labels that lead from
the host (leaf node in the naming tree) to the top of the worldwide
naming tree.
Contains resource records and sub-domains
Some resource records point to authoritative server for sub-
domains / zones
A domain is a subtree of the worldwide naming tree.
Distribution of Name Spaces
Hierarchy of Name Servers
Zone
Root Server
Primary and Secondary Servers
Hierarchy of name servers
Zones and domains
Its records are held in a database (“zonefile”) and
served from an authoritative name server
Zone refers to all the resource records in a domain but
not its sub domains
A primary server loads all information
from the disk file;
The secondary server loads all
information from the primary server.
DNS In The Internet
Generic Domain
Country Domain
Inverse Domain
Top-level domains
Three types of top-level domains:
Organizational: 3-character code indicates the
function of the organization
Used primarily within the US
Examples: gov, mil, edu, org, com, net
Geographical: 2-character country or region code
Examples: ro, us, va, jp, de
Reverse domains: A special domain (in-addr.arpa)
used for IP address-to-name mapping
There are more than 200 top-level domains.
DNS in the Internet
Generic domains
Generic domain labels
Label Description
com Commercial organizations
edu Educational institutions
gov Government institutions
int International organizations
mil Military groups
net Network support centers
org Nonprofit organizations
New generic domain labels
Label Description
aero Airlines and aerospace companies
biz Businesses or firms (similar to com)
coop Cooperative business organizations
info Information service providers
museum Museums and other nonprofit organizations
name Personal names (individuals)
pro Professional individual organizations
Country domains
Inverse domain
Using the DNS
A Domain Name (like www.tiscali.co.uk) is the
KEY to look up information
The result is one or more RESOURCE RECORDS
(RRs)
There are different RRs for different types of
information
You can ask for the specific type you want, or
ask for "any" RRs associated with the domain
name
What is a resource record?
• A domain contains resource records
• Resource records are analogous to files
• Classified into types
• Some of the important types are SOA, NS, A,
CNAME and MX
• Normally defines in “zone files”
Commonly seen RRs
A (address): map hostname to IP address
PTR (pointer): map IP address to name
MX (mail exchanger): where to deliver mail for
user@domain
CNAME (canonical name): map alternative
hostname to real hostname
TXT (text): any descriptive text
NS (name server), SOA (start of authority): used
for delegation and management of the DNS itself
The “A” Record
• The “Address” record
• One or more normally defines a host
• Contains an IPv4 Address (the address computers
use to uniquely identify each other on the internet)
Eg. The record:
www A 203.18.56.31
In the ausregistry.com.au domain, defines the host uniquely
identifiable as “www.ausregistry.com.au” to be reachable at
the IPv4 Address 203.18.56.31
The “CNAME” Record
• A CNAME defines an alias
• The alias will then be resolved, if another CNAME is
encountered then the process continues until an A
record is found
Eg. The record:
search CNAME www.google.com.
In the ausregistry.com.au domain, defines the name uniquely
identifiable as “search.ausregistry.com.au” to be and alias to
“www.google.com”
The “MX” Record
• An MX record defines the mail servers for a
particular domain
• Mail eXchange records hold the name of hosts, and
their priorities, able to deliver mail for the domain.
Eg. The record:
ausregistry.com.au MX 10 mail
In the ausregistry.com.au domain, defines the host mail to be
the priority 10 mail server for the “ausregistry.com.au”
domain
The “NS” Record
• An NS record defines the authoritative Name
servers for the domain.
• The “Name Server” records also define the name
servers of children domains
Eg. The record:
internal NS ns1.hosting.com.au.
In the ausregistry.com.au domain, defines the host
“ns1.hosting.com.au” to be a name sever for the
“internal.ausregistry.com.au” sub-domain
What is a Delegation?
• Delegation refers to the act of putting NS (name
server) records in a domain name “delegating”
control of a sub-domain to another entity
• This entity then has the ability to control the
resource records in this sub-domain and delegate
further children domains to other entities.
Eg. IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) delegating
control of a country code domain to the country.
DNS is a Client-Server application
Requests and responses are normally
sent in UDP packets, port 53
Occasionally uses TCP, port 53
for very large requests, e.g. zone transfer
from master to slave
TCP/53 must NOT be filtered.
McGraw-Hill ©The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2004
Resolution
Resolver
Mapping Names to Addresses
Mapping Addresses to Names
Recursive Resolution
Iterative Resolution
Caching
DNS Distributed Database
There is one primary server for a
domain, and typically a number of
secondary servers containing replicated
databases. rpi.edu DNS server
rpi.edu
rpi.edu rpi.edu
DNSrpi.edu
DB
DNS DB DNS
DNSDBDB
Authoritative Replicas
There are three roles involved in DNS
Application
e.g. web browser
Caching Authoritative
Resolver
Nameserver Nameserver
RESOLVER
Takes request from application, formats it into UDP packet, sends to cache
CACHING NAMESERVER
Returns the answer if already known
Otherwise searches for an authoritative server which has the information
Caches the result for future queries
Also known as RECURSIVE nameserver
AUTHORITATIVE NAMESERVER
Contains the actual information put into the DNS by the domain owner
DNS Clients
A DNS client is called a resolver.
A call to gethostbyname()is handled by
a resolver (typically part of the client).
Most Unix workstations have the file
/etc/resolv.conf that contains the
local domain and the addresses of DNS
servers for that domain.
Recursive / Iterative resolution
Name – address Resolution mapping
a name to an address or
an address to a name
Query and response messages
Header format
