How Domain Name System (DNS) Works
Part 2: Networking Solution in Early stage of Internet
From Chapter 1, we know that the following problems must be solved:
- Human being would like to use name to call computers on the Internet.
- Computers themselves need to use IP Addresses to communicate with each others.
In the very early stage of Internet, there were only about 100 computers connected with the Internet, the problems above can be solved very easily.
The solution was: The Standard Research Institue Network Information Center (SRI - NIC) was responsible to maintain and update a text file (HOSTS.txt) . The content of the HOSTS.txt was something like that:
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All computers connected with the Internet had a copy of HOSTS.txt.
If you needed to communicate with a computer on the Internet (e.g. MyGreatName.com), you could check with the HOSTS.txt file to find out the IP Address (212.69.204.148) of MyGreatName.com. Once you got the IP Address of MyGreatName.com, your computer could commnicate with MyGreatName.com.
All new computers added to the Internet or any changes must inform SRI-NIC. And SRI-NIC would update the contents of HOSTS.txt a few times every week. This will ensure the accuracy and validation of the HOSTS.txt file.
Then the administrator of each computer on the Internet will use FTP to connect with the computer of SRI-NIC to download the latest version of the HOSTS.txt file. This could ensure that all administrators were using the updated HOSTS.txt.
