DNS Basics
DNS (Domain Name System/Domain Name Service) is a way to convert human-friendly domain names into computer-friendly IP addresses. What is easier to remember www.frii.com or 216.17.184.30? Both of these are correct, both will get you to the FRII home page, but www.frii.com is much easier to remember.
Forward and Reverse DNS
Forward DNS
Forward DNS is the act of resolving a Name to an IP address, for example:
- www.frii.com -> 216.17.184.30
** Any customer who has DNS service with FRII will automatically have forward DNS setup.
You can check forward DNS for a website by using a tool such as Lookupserver.com or by checking it with the command 'nslookup' in command prompt.
Reverse DNS
Reverse DNS is the act of resolving an IP address to a Name, for example:
- 216.17.184.30 -> www.frii.com
A customer who has DNS service with FRII will need to request reverse DNS; this is not automatically setup for you. FRII Technical Support will setup a reverse DNS entry for you at no charge when we provide your domain hosting or DNS services. Please note that the IP address you are requesting reverse DNS for must be a FRII-provided address. If the IP address is provided by another carrier, they will have to setup the reverse DNS.
You can check reverse DNS for a website by using a tool such as Lookupserver.com or by checking it with the command 'nslookup' in command prompt.
Primary and Secondary DNS
Primary DNS
When FRII is providing Primary DNS service for a customer, that means FRII is in complete control of the zone record data for their domain. In most cases, this also means that the customer has their domain registered through FRII as well. All changes to the customer DNS zone record data are done through MyFRII.
For any domain that FRII is performing Primary DNS, a Whois query should return results that show only these two servers:
- ns1.frii.net
- ns2.frii.net
Secondary DNS
When a customer is running their own name server, but would like to have FRII's name servers serve that data, it is called Secondary DNS. When FRII is performing Secondary DNS, a query could return the customers name server as well as either or both FRII name servers:
- ns1.frii.net
- ns2.frii.net
Name Servers
A name server is a server that responds to DNS queries for a particular domain. It tells where the web pages are located and where to deliver mail for the domain. When a person types in a web address like http://www.frii.com, their computer must be told how to get to that web site. That is the job of the name servers. A user's name server asks where www.frii.com is; the user's name server then asks the authoritative name server where the page is be located. When the name server receives the request, it gives the IP address of the web site to the user's computer. The user's computer then speaks directly to www.frii.com and downloads the web page. In summary, you need to have name servers find out for you what web addresses have what IP addresses assigned to them.
What is a Domain?
A domain is best described as your point of presence on the Internet like frii.com, that is FRII's domain. FRII has complete control over all hosts under the frii.com (second level domain). It is where we live on the Internet. Not only companies can own domains, anyone can contact a registrar and register his or her own domain names, as long as someone else has not registered the name already.
What is a Registrar?
In the context of the Internet, a registrar is a person or company that registers your domain for you. A registrar will determine if the name you would like is available, then register your domain name as valid on the Internet.
