Editing Domain Name System (section)

==Function==
An often-used analogy to explain the DNS is that it serves as the [[telephone directory|phone book]] for the Internet by translating human-friendly computer [[hostname]]s into IP addresses. For example, the hostname <code>www.example.com</code> within the domain name [[example.com]] translates to the addresses {{IPaddr|93.184.216.34}} ([[IPv4]]) and {{IPaddr|2606:2800:220:1:248:1893:25c8:1946}} ([[IPv6]]). The DNS can be quickly and transparently updated, allowing a service's location on the network to change without affecting the end users, who continue to use the same hostname. Users take advantage of this when they use meaningful Uniform Resource Locators ([[URL]]s) and [[e-mail address]]es without having to know how the computer actually locates the services.

An important and [[Ubiquitous computing|ubiquitous]] function of the DNS is its central role in distributed Internet services such as [[cloud service]]s and [[content delivery network]]s.<ref>J. Dilley, B. Maggs, J. Parikh, H. Prokop, R. Sitaraman, and B. Weihl. {{cite web | url=https://people.cs.umass.edu/~ramesh/Site/PUBLICATIONS_files/DMPPSW02.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150417121338/http://people.cs.umass.edu/~ramesh/Site/PUBLICATIONS_files/DMPPSW02.pdf |archive-date=2015-04-17 |url-status=live| title =Globally Distributed Content Delivery, IEEE Internet Computing, September/October 2002, pp. 50–58}}</ref> When a user accesses a distributed Internet service using a URL, the domain name of the [[URL]] is translated to the IP address of a server that is proximal to the user.  The key functionality of the DNS exploited here is that different users can ''simultaneously'' receive different translations for the ''same'' domain name, a key point of divergence from a traditional phone-book view of the DNS. This process of using the DNS to assign proximal servers to users is key to providing faster and more reliable responses on the Internet and is widely used by most major Internet services.<ref>{{cite journal |author1=Nygren., E. |author2=Sitaraman R. K. |author3=Sun, J. |title= The Akamai Network: A Platform for High-Performance Internet Applications |journal=ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review |volume=44 |issue=3 |year=2010 |pages=2–19 |doi=10.1145/1842733.1842736 |s2cid=207181702 |url=http://www.akamai.com/dl/technical_publications/network_overview_osr.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101202153338/http://www.akamai.com/dl/technical_publications/network_overview_osr.pdf |archive-date=2010-12-02 |url-status=live |access-date=November 19, 2012 }}</ref>

The DNS reflects the structure of administrative responsibility on the Internet.<ref name="rfc1035" /> Each subdomain is a [[DNS zone|zone]] of administrative autonomy delegated to a manager. For zones operated by a [[Domain name registry|registry]], administrative information is often complemented by the registry's [[Registration Data Access Protocol|RDAP]] and [[WHOIS]] services.  That data can be used to gain insight on, and track responsibility for, a given host on the Internet.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://conference.apnic.net/data/39/dns-abuse-handling-final_1425362607.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151222094305/https://conference.apnic.net/data/39/dns-abuse-handling-final_1425362607.pdf |archive-date=2015-12-22 |url-status=live |title=DNS Abuse Handling |author1=Champika Wijayatunga |date=February 2015 |publisher=[[Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre|APNIC]] |access-date=18 December 2016 }}</ref>