DNS.
The internet's phone book: it turns a name you can remember into the number a computer needs.
- Pizza. Now.1
You know the name — pizza.com — but computers only call numbers, never names.
- …what’s its number?!2
And a name is useless to a computer until it’s turned into an address.
- pizza.com — hurry!3
So your computer asks a resolver — the internet’s directory assistance.
- 4
The resolver races down a chain of address books until one of them knows the answer.
- Beautiful.5
Back comes the number — the address your computer needed all along.
- Next time: instant slice.6
It connects — and jots the number on a sticky note, so next time skips the whole hunt.
Semicolony semicolony.dev/eli5/dns/comic