How DNS Works

Watch the full DNS resolution chain animated step by step. From browser cache to root server to authoritative nameserver — see how your domain becomes an IP address.

Click "Resolve" to watch the full DNS resolution chain for example.com.

Click any node for details. The packet (gold dot) shows data traveling through the DNS chain.

What this DNS visualization shows

Type a domain and watch the full resolution journey animate — from your device to a recursive resolver, up to a root server, down to the top-level-domain server, and finally to the authoritative server that returns the IP address. It turns the invisible step between "typing a URL" and "the page loads" into something you can follow query by query.

How DNS resolution works

DNS is the internet's phone book: it translates human names like example.com into the IP addresses machines route to. A recursive resolver walks the hierarchy — root → TLD (.com) → authoritative — caching each answer along the way so the next lookup is instant. Different record types carry different data: A/AAAA for IPv4/IPv6 addresses, CNAME for aliases, MX for mail, and NS for delegation.

Why it matters

Almost every outage or "it works on my machine" networking mystery eventually touches DNS. Understanding caching and TTLs explains why changes take time to propagate and how to debug them. Next, see what happens once the connection is made in how HTTPS works.

Frequently asked questions

What is DNS propagation?

The delay while resolvers worldwide expire their cached old record (governed by the record's TTL) and pick up the new one — anywhere from minutes to 48 hours.

What's the difference between an A record and a CNAME?

An A record maps a name directly to an IP address; a CNAME maps a name to another name (an alias), which is then resolved to an IP.

Why is the first request to a site sometimes slow?

If nothing is cached, the resolver must walk the full hierarchy. Subsequent lookups hit the cache and are near-instant.