How Websites Work
What actually happens between typing an address and seeing a page — DNS, servers, HTML, and the round trip in between.
Beginner8 min readDaksh BathlaDEFINITIONDevelopment
DNS
Domain Name System
The system that translates a domain name people can remember into the numeric address a computer connects to. The internet's phone book.
EXAMPLE
You type navitallabs.com; DNS answers with an IP address; your browser connects to that address.
WHY IT MATTERS
It's the first step of every page load, so when it's misconfigured nothing else can work. Its answers are cached, which is why a change takes hours rather than seconds to reach everyone.