The website is unknown – How DNS works | Hacker News Reader

The website is unknown – How DNS works

howdns.works

177 pointsdbrgn28 comments

I didn't even know .works TLD was a thing. Feels like the 'market' is oversaturated with a new one every second. Here's a link to a bunch I didn't know existed: https://iwantmyname.com/domains/new-gtld-domain-extensions

I did smile when I saw it was by DNSimple, absolutely love using them.

EDIT: I'm not a shill for these guys, but I signed up with them very early on and their customer service was fantastic. What made me become a (hopefully) life-long customer was when I emailed them to say that as a result of a botched cochlear implant surgery leaving me very sick, and out of work I could no longer pay my plan -- and they actually offered to help pay all my services I had with them until I was back on my feet! It was a small token on their behalf but so appreciated by me (but I asked a friend to meet the repayments instead to try maintain some self dignity). I just thought I should share this wee story!

Full list here

https://publicsuffix.org/list/effective_tld_names.dat

The PSL has a quite different meaning, this list is enhanced with a lot of suffixes that are not actually TLDs. You may want to refer to https://github.com/weppos/ianawhois instead.

DISCLAIMER: I'm both a maintainer of the Mozilla PSL and the linked GitHub repo.

How servers work: https://xkcd.com/869/

As it turns out, one of the referenced sites exist:

http://zone.vision

http://zone.vision/#/news.ycombinator.com

Yep, this is another tool we built to help troubleshoot zone issues. We also use it to provide data for some parts of the DNSimple UI since zone.vision has an underlying API (http://api.zone.vision/)

So, according to this the .COM TLD server, when asked to resolve dnsimple.com, would say 'ask ns1.dnsimple.com'? That still requires resolving dnsimple.com, which seems circular. Surely the .COM TLD server would give the IP address of the authoritative name servers for the domain?

Yep, it would.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System#Circular_de...

Worth mentioning too the concept of bailiwick, which Wikipedia doesn't really cover.

Thanks! They should really add this to the guide, because it's a confusing step at the moment.

"The management duty of most top-level domains (TLDs) belong to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)"

This is not a true statement. Each TLD is controlled by its respective registry, which is certainly not ICANN.

Perhaps "manage" vs "control"?

ICANN doesn't really control TLDs either. All ICANN does is grant monopolies. Once the monopoly is granted they do very little. You could argue they're a regulator, but they have close to zero enforcement power.

It glosses over glue records, which it really shouldn't.

Agreed, I would imagine for someone who doesn't know about glue records, the "road trip to ns1.dnsimple.com" must be super confusing since it doesn't explain how to find their location.

Ah, I'll confirm that imagining. I'm unfamiliar with glue records. How I've not encountered them I don't know, and it should possibly concern me. Maybe I have and have forgotten. Anyway, I was thinking hang on, back to square one, where do we get the ns ip addresses, we're going to go round in circles. Thanks for filling in the missing piece.

I always preferred this little illustration for how DNS worked[1]. It's similar to the linked one, but more minimal and to the point.

I had a 1920x1200 copy around somewhere I used for a desktop background, but can't find it at the moment.

[1] http://gdihouston.github.io/intro-programming-concepts/image...

I think the whole DNS mechanism is broken badly

Beside the hundreds of new nonsense TLDs you have domains being taken down for copyright infringment or dissident suppression, name squatting and of course domain name frontrunning by registrars

And then there are of course DNS aimed DDOS attacks etc

Something needs to be done (yes I heard of namecoin) since the web as we know it is getting shittier by the year :(

Front running is more or less fixed by naming and shaming the registrars. I'll start:

GoDaddy is well known for domain name frontrunning. If you search for the availability of a domain using their website, they will likely temporarily register that name, forcing you to use them as a registrar. Use an alternative like gandi.net or Google Domains.

> ...then there are of course DNS aimed DDOS attacks...

Traffic amplification attacks are possible with protocols that return more data than one sends to trigger the return.

> Something needs to be done...

Do you, yc1010 have either a specific list of problems with DNS-the-protocol and/or DNS-the-distributed-name-to-address-mapping-system or a set of proposed solutions? :)

wow. I was not expecting that level of quality! I also did not believe one could caricature the classes of dns server so accurately.

This is amazing and innovative. even for me being web developer its difficult to understand, how dns actually works ;)

Awesome.I sent this to my friend who doesn't know anything about DNS and he told me this is awesome. I wasn't expecting that.

I love the illustrations :) You should create a series of kids books explaining such topics, and I'll buy them... for my kids.

It's very nice. I think it needs a summary at the side or something, so we know where we are.

I agree there should be little more description.

This is awesome! Thanks for sharing!

You're welcome, I just stumbled over it on Twitter :)

Cute. I didn't know nameservers had so much personality.

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