CHAPTER 11 – APPLICATION LAYER:

TCP/IP Protocol Suite

11.1 Introduction
11.2 Domain Name System

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1.1 Introduction

• Protocols that allows people to use the internet.

 Domain Name System (DNS)
 Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
 File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
 Hypertext Transfer Protocol(HTTP)

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS)

• To identify an entity, the Internet uses the IP address,

which uniquely identifies the connection of a host to
the Internet.
• However, people prefer to use names for hosts instead
of numeric addresses.
• Therefore, we need a system that can map a name to an
address or an address to a name.
• DNS is a protocol with this capacity.

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.1 Domain Name Space

• Domain name space can be pictured as an inverted

hierarchical tree structure with one root node at the top
and maximum of 128 levels: level 0(root) to level 127.
• Each node in the tree has a unique label, which is a
string with a maximum of 63 characters.
• The root label is a null string (empty string)
• DNS requires that children of a node have different
labels, which guarantees the uniqueness of the domain
names.

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.1 Domain Name Space Contd..

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.2 Domain Name

• Each node in the tree has a domain name.

• A full domain name is a sequence of labels separated
by dots(.).
• The domain names are always read from the node up to
the root.

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.2 Domain Name Contd..

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.3 Domain

• A domain is a sub tree of the domain name space.

• The name of the domain is the domain name of the
node at the top of the sub tree.
• Note that domain may itself be divided into domains,
or sub domains as they are sometimes called.

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.3 Domain Contd..

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.4 Distribution of information in Domain Name

Space

• It is very inefficient and also not reliable to have just

one computer to store a huge amount of information.
Solution

Distribute the information among many computers

called DNS servers.

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.4 Distribution of information in Domain Name

Space

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.4 Distribution of information in Domain Name

Space

• Zone – What a server is responsible for, or has

authority over, is called a zone.
• If a server accepts responsibility for a domain and does
not divide the domain into smaller domains, then
domain = zone
• The server makes a database called a zone file and
keeps all the information for every node under that
domain.

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.4 Distribution of information in Domain Name

Space

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.4 Distribution of information in Domain Name

Space

• Root server – A server whose zone consists of the

whole tree.
• A root server usually does not store any information
about domains. But delegates its authority to other
servers, keeping references to those servers.

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.4 Distribution of information in Domain Name

Space

• DNS defines two types of servers:

1. Primary Server
- Stores a file about the zone for which it is an
authority.
- It is responsible for creating, maintaining and
updating the zone file.
- It stores the zone file on a local disk.

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.4 Distribution of information in Domain Name

Space

• DNS defines two types of servers:

2. Secondary Server
- A server that transfers the complete information
about a zone from another server and stores the file
on its local disk.
- Neither creates nor updates the zone files.
- If updating is required, it must be done by the
primary server, which sends the updated version to
the secondary.
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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.4 Distribution of information in Domain Name

Space

• Primary and Secondary servers are both authoritative

for the zones they serve.
• A server can be a primary server for a specific zone and
a secondary server for another zone.

Primary Server – Loads all information from the disk

file.
Secondary Server – Loads all information from the
primary server.
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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.5 DNS in the Internet

• In the Internet, the domain name space is divided into 3

different sections.

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.5 DNS in the Internet Contd..

Generic Domains
• Define registered hosts according to their behavior.
• Each node in the tree defines a domain, which is an
index to the domain name space database.
• According to the tree , each label specifying an
organization type.

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Generic Domains

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.5 DNS in the Internet

Country Domains

• Defines the country

abbreviations with two
characters.
Ex: lk – Sri Lanka
us – United States

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11.2 Domain Name System (DNS) Contd..

11.2.5 DNS in the Internet Contd..

Inverse Domains

• The inverse domain finds

domain name for a given
IP address.
• This is called address-to-
name resolution.

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