What is DNS?
Also called: Domain Name System
The short answer
DNS is the internet's address book: it translates a domain name like example.com into the IP address of the server that hosts the site.
What people say: “pointing my domain”, “DNS settings”.
DNS, explained
When someone types your domain, their device asks DNS servers where that name lives. The answer comes from records you control at your registrar or DNS provider: A records point to an IP address, CNAME records point to another name, MX records route email.
Changing DNS records is how you connect a domain to a new host. Changes can take time to reach everyone because DNS answers are cached around the world.
Questions people ask about DNS
What is DNS?
DNS is the internet's address book: it translates a domain name like example.com into the IP address of the server that hosts the site.
Why isn't my domain working after I changed DNS?
DNS answers are cached; wait for the old records to expire (their TTL), and double-check the record type and value your host asked for.
Related terms
A domain name is the human-readable address of a website, such as example.com, that points to the server where the site lives.
A recordAn A record is a DNS record that points a domain name to a server's IPv4 address; AAAA does the same for IPv6.
CNAME recordA CNAME record is a DNS record that makes one domain name an alias of another, commonly used to point www or a subdomain at a hosting provider.
DNS propagationDNS propagation is the delay before a DNS change is seen everywhere, because resolvers around the world keep cached answers until their time-to-live expires.
NameserversNameservers are the servers that hold a domain's DNS records; changing them at the registrar hands control of all the domain's DNS to another provider.
Part of the Web Encyclopedia by Apex Flow Digital. Definitions are general knowledge, kept current, with no invented statistics.