DNS - How it works and why it's important to your website.

This page describes how DNS works and why it's so important regarding your hosting account. DNS stands for Domain Name Service. It translates your domain name www.3essentials.com into an IP Address, 66.179.153.10 so that visitors wishing to view your web pages can contact the web server that is hosting those pages.

When you purchase a domain name, say 3essentials.com, you purchase it from a registrar (Network Solutions for example). The registrar registers the domain name for all of the DNS Servers on the planet to query. There are several DNS Servers that contain records about the domain (3essentials.com) and what DNS Servers have the master record for that domain, these are called root DNS Servers. When another DNS Server (say your ISP's) needs to know where to go to find the master record they query(go ask) the root DNS Servers.

So let's say a visitor wishes to view your website and say they type www.3essentials.com (or better yet, your domain name!) into their web browser and click go. The visitors computer that is connected to the internet contacts it's ISP's DNS Server looking for www.3essentials.com. If the ISP's DNS Server already has a record of the IP (66.179.153.10) for the www.3essentials.com web server it gives the visitors computer that IP Address, and then the computer connects to the IP and the browser passes www.3essentials.com to the web server for the page to be displayed.

If the ISP's DNS Server doesn't have the IP for www.3essentials.com, then it contacts the root DNS servers on the internet asking them what is the IP Address of the DNS Server that has the IP for www.3essentials.com. That's where our DNS Servers come into play. 3Essentials DNS Servers contain the master record for www.3essentials.com. Any DNS Server on the planet that doesn't have the IP will ask the root dns servers who does, the root dns servers will say go ask NS1.3ESSENTIALS.COM or NS2.3ESSENTIALS.COM for the IP. So the ISP's DNS Server will go ask one of our DNS Servers for the IP and then pass that back to the requesting vistors computer.

When you purchase your new domain, you need to delegate ( or assign ) it to our DNS Servers so that every DNS Server on the planet knows where to go to get the IP for your domain.

When you transfer your domain to us, it can be a lengthy process (up to 72 hours) for the DNS records to replicate. First you need to create a transfer request. You do this by creating a regsitrar account with us, then you sign into that account and select the transfer option. A request is sent to the email address that is listed for the domain when it was created. You must click the link or follow the instructions that is sent to that email address. For security reasons we cannot confirm the transfer for you, because we do not have access to that email address. The transfer moves the registration for the domain from your current registrar (Say Network Solutions) to another regisrar, say 3Essentials.com.

This article is the sole property of 3Essentials, Inc.