Let’s talk about DNS

First let’s get the acronym out to the way…

DNS stands for Domain Name System.

This post we’re talking about DNS and your business:

The internet is made up of a bunch of numbers called IP addresses and these addresses point to networks that host websites, email servers, and more.

DNS is the phone book of the internet that turns a Domain Name (like availnetworks.ca) to an IP address. IP addresses are how things find other things on big and small networks (like the big vast internet).

There are two types of DNS you can use with your Domain: Free DNS and Premium DNS.

These are the primary focus of this post as they have a direct impact on communications.

Now lets talk Free DNS…

If you have a personal domain and website that doesn’t get a lot of internet traffic (and it isn’t the end of the world if the site is slow or offline), and you aren’t getting a large volume of emails everyday, then Free DNS is just fine. And this is what comes with your Domain Name from your domain registrar – like GoDaddy.

This is where Premium DNS comes in…

Premium DNS is like Free DNS with more capacity and security. It can handle more traffic (also called queries). It is faster, much faster. This is what business focused Domains should be using. And what is traffic anyway? Every email sent to you. Every Search Engine that lists your website. Every visit to your website. Anything that looks up a domain on a network is traffic.

Reliable communication is critical. VOIP phones use DNS. Messaging systems use DNS. Apps use DNS. Everything uses DNS.

Now there are a ton of other things related to DNS – a never ending list of acronyms and terms – TTL, IPv4, IPv6, replication, TLD, records, cnames, SEO, etc. – but I’m trying to keep this post simple so you can get a good grasp of the core concept here, so ignore those for now.

When Avail Networks manages your Domain Name or Network, we only use Premium DNS.

Thanks for reading.