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DNS
(Domain Name Service)
A brief
overview
Contents :
 History
 How it works
 Problems and ways they are
fixed
 Concluding Remarks

By
Robert Kopack
Standard first written in 1983, published in RFC's 882 and 883

First implementation written in 1984

BIND is released in 1985 and quickly grows in popularity.

Versions are eventually released for most Operating Systems, including Windows NT
Standard updated in 1987, published in RFC's 1034 and 1035; remains untouched

to this day.
Optional extensions to the standard exist to address certain problems with it, written

later on as they are found
Name Servers exist for every
domain level to provide the text to
IP address exchange.
Domain levels are delimited by
dots in the string you type into your
web browser
Example:
The computer wants to
connect to
my.njit.edu
After this, the Computer would
store this data in a cache, along
with a value for how it should keep
it in the cache. This prevents Name
Servers from catching on fire from
the number of requests they would
receive per second.
Problem 1: What if the name server for my.njit.edu exists at derp.my.njit.edu? To resolve
derp.my.njit.edu, you'd need to resolve my.njit.edu ....but you can't.
Solution: The Name Server for the domain up contains records for when something like this
would happen – njit.edu would contain a record indicating the IP Address for derp.my.njit.edu
Problem 2: When propagating DNS changes, sometimes extra data is sent outside of the
request. Regrettably some implementations take this extra data and treat it as 100% true,
when in fact they could have been changed or purposely malicious.
Solution: New Implementations of the standard don't do this.
Problem 3: The DNS standard was written without security in mind, before the internet
became a big thing. Man-in-the-middle attacks are easily possible.
Solution: An Optional Extension of the Standard exists that encrypts all outgoing data.
Early to bed Early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy,
and wise.
When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.
You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine.
A backward poet writes inverse.
A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.
When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I.

The Standards for the Domain Name Service
were written over 20 years ago, and are still
used today in the TCP/IP protocol. Can you
think of something that was made 20 years
ago that you still use today, and still works
nearly flawlessly? Although DNS has some
security flaws, optional extensions and better
implementations of the standard has
disallowed any major hacks or problems
resulting from DNS inquiries.
In closing, DNS is an awesome standard.