As explained earlier, there is a database that keeps the user friendly names for websites and the IP address of the computer where the website is hosted. Let me use an every day example to explain how this works.

The mall
A mall is simply a building owned by an individual person or organization, which is split up in units which are then rented out for individual shop owners to do their business. These units are setup with electricity and water, the security is put in place, etc, things a shop owner does not need to worry about, because the mall takes care of those. The shop owner only needs to setup his shop according to his taste and corporate identity, to attract customers. In this case, please note that the mall owner is not responsible to attract customers for the shop. The shop owner then puts up a sign with the name of his company in front of the shop. This shop owner then needs to register his shop at for instance the local Chamber of Commerce (CoC), where a record of his shop will be stored.

If I wanted to get in touch with this company I could go to the CoC and ask for that name. They will then give me an address. When I would go to that address I would see one huge mall, with a lot of small units. To know where the shop I’m looking for is located, I will look on the store locater, the big sign with a list of all the stores and their unit number. Most of the time there is also a small map of the mall where you can see where your desired unit is . You then walk up to that unit, to find the story you are looking for, and you enter to see what they have to offer.

The comparison
This is a simple example to explain how domain names are processed. You type in the name of the desired site in your browser. The name is looked up in the DNS database and the IP address of the host of your website is extracted. You then are sent to that IP address where you will “meet” a local Name Server, kind of like the store locater in the mall, who will bring your request to the right unit. Once in that unit, you can see the website that is put there for you.

Of course you understand that this is a very simplified explanation. The real processes are far more complicated then this. But in short, this is what happens when you type in an URL.

DNS in short
So, in short, the Domain name services have a lot of functions, but the most important function is to translate domain names (www.afewgoodnotes.com) into IP addresses (64.202.123.201), so we need to remember user friendly names instead of all those numbers.