When using the Internet most people connect to web sites, ftp servers or other Internet servers by

connecting to a domain name, as in www.bleepingcomputer.com. Internet applications, though, do not

communicate via domain names, but rather using IP addresses, such as 192.168.1.1. Therefore when
you type a domain name in your program that you wish to connect to, your application must first
convert it to an IP address that it will use to connect to.
The way these hostnames are resolved to their mapped IP address is called Domain Name Resolution.
On almost all operating systems whether they be Apple, Linux, Unix, Netware, or Windows the
majority of resolutions from domain names to IP addresses are done through a procedure called DNS.
Domain Name Resolutions
As discussed above, Domain Name Resolution is the task of converting domain names to their
corresponding IP address. This is all done behind the scenes and is rarely noticed by the user. When
you enter a domain name in an application that uses the Internet, the application will issue a
command to have the operating system convert the domain name into its IP address, and then
connect to that IP address to perform whatever operation it is trying to do.
The way the operating system resolves the domain name is based upon its configuration. For almost
all operating systems the default order for Domain Name resolution is as follows:
1. Hosts File - There is a file called the HOSTS file that you can use to convert domain names to
IP addresses. Entries in the HOSTS file override any mappings that would be resolved via a
DNS server.
2. Domain Name System - This is the system used on the Internet for converting domain
names to their corresponding IP addresses. Your operating system will connect to the DNS
server configured on your computer and have that server return to you the IP address for the
domain name you queried it with.
3. Netbios - This only applies to Windows machines and will only be used to map names to IP
addresses if all previous methods failed. This method will attempt to map the netbios name
you are trying to connect to with an IP address.