If you don't know what DNS is your going to have a hard time getting traffic to your website. If you know what it is, but don't understand how it works your walking in the dark. At a minimum you should know how DNS works at a high level. That being said this article gives you resources to understand DNS in breadth and depth.

DNS

DNS stands for domain name system. It's the thing that turns www.google.com into something that a computer can actually understand. An IP address.

Free

DNS made easy - This is a great intro to DNS. It gives the big picture about what DNS does and how it works. The amount of information in here will probably leave you asking questions about certain things, but that being said I haven't found a more entertaining video about DNS than this one.

How DNS works - Computerphile - This is quite similar to DNS made easy, but it provides a bit more detail on how things work. Hearing the same information in a different way often helps solidify your understanding.

DNS the good parts - This puts the ideas in the previous two resources into practice. This article talks about DNS, but more practically gives you a way to poke at DNS with thedig (domain information grouper) utility.

Paid

DNS & BIND - This is by far the most in depth resource here. This book covers just about everything you could want to know about DNS. If your looking to understand DNS on a deeper level this is where you'll want to go.

Final Thoughts

How much you'll need to know about DNS will vary. For most It'll probably be good enough just to know how it functions at a high level. Others might need to know the nitty gritty of how DNS operates.

If your looking to understand how DNS works at high level check out

• DNS made easy
• How DNS works - computerphile
• DNS the good parts

If your looking for a deep dive on DNS then go read

• DNS & BIND

That's all I got for ya. If you enjoyed this article there's more of em at the Learning Computations Archive.