What is a DNS Server anyway?

Ah, so you are diving in the world of semi-geeky terminology are you? We'll do out best to answer this in non-technical terms as there really is no need to get into technical information unless you are a systems administrator - in which case, pick up the book

1. DNS - Stands for "Domain Name Server" - what a DNS server does is tell the internet users and other servers where to look when someone is asking for your domain name - either for email or to view your website.

How does this happen? - Computers think in numbers and people think in names.

DNS is the process of converting names into numbers, and vice-versa.

By using DNS:

Humans can remember simple domain names (such as www.bob.com) and computers can be programmed to communicate with each other with IP addresses (such as 24.65.27.15) - DNS servers take care of this translation for us..
It becomes possible to change a server's location in the net without having to teach all the users a new address.

Now here is the caveat - so read closely to this part:

WeDoHosting.com runs name servers for our client websites and directs internet traffic appropriately to your website or to deliver mail.

You, as the end user, do not get your DNS information from WeDoHosting.com - it all comes from your Internet access provider. There is a chance that your internet provider may have different information that WeDoHosting.com as not everyone is totally in synchronization 100% of the time.

WeDoHosting.com sends our updates out to the world every 5 minutes. This is called a TTL (Time to Live). Most internet providers update their DNS servers every 12-24 hours, so although we may be telling the world every 5 minutes about our network and the information about your website, the world may only be listening once every day.

Also in order to conserve bandwidth and make the internet appear "fast", many "high-speed" access providers use what is referred to as a "caching server" (pronounced "cashing") that will pre-load web pages and DNS information onto their network. Although a great feature for high-speed access, you end up looking at information that is stored on these caching servers and not from the actual web server where your website is living. This makes doing web page updates a real treat and also adds another layer of complexity to the DNS updating process.

2. - The actual process from request to getting the actual page.

Entire books have been written to answer this question. In simple, non-technical terms, here is what happens when you type www.yourdomain.com into your browser:

A: First, your request for mydomain.com is sent to your internet service provider's DNS servers. As mentioned above, most ISPs will cache DNS information, in order to reduce traffic on their system. If your ISP's DNS servers have the DNS information for mydomain.com, they will forward your request directly to the mydomain.com server.

B:. If your ISP's DNS servers do not have information for yourdomain.com, then they will forward your request to the internet's root name servers (the ones at the top of the food chain) . The root name servers keep records of every single domain name, and which registrar it belongs to (the updates are sent out daily - not every 5 minutes like ours).
In this case, the root name servers find that yourdomain.com is registered by Network Solutions, so the root name servers forward your request to Network Solutions.

C:. When the Network Solutions systems received your request, it checks its WHOIS record for yourdomain.com. Since yourdomain.com is pointing to our name servers (dns1.wedohosting.com and dns2.wedoyhosting.com) , Network Solutions forwards your request to our network.

D: Our name servers contain zone files for each domain hosted on our network. When the name servers receive your request, they check the zone file for yourdomain.com and see that it is pointing to IP address 64.141.0.127. The name servers forward your request to the yourdomain.com server, which accepts the request and sends the appropriate web page back to your browser.

When you sign up for web hosting with WeDoHosting.com, you will be sent instructions asking you to update your DNS server records at your domain registrar. Until that happens, WeDoHosting.com will not have the authority to manage your domain name. Once you have made the updates you will need to allow 24-72 hours for the changed information to make it around the internet and to the root servers,