DNS Overview with a discussion of DNS Spoofing

DNS (Domain Name System) is a distributed database that maps domain names to IP addresses. DNS offers a practical way around the difficulty of maintaining large hosts files in an organisation. On a larger scale, Internet-connected computers use DNS to resolve URLs (Universal Resource Locators). In this way, one doesn’t need to know the IP address of a Web server – just its name. DNS names take the form <domain>.<domain type>, e.g. sans.org. While the list of available DNS types is currently being redesigned by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), some popular existing types include.edu (educational establishments),.mil (military organisations),.org (non-profit organisations), and.com (commercial organisations). There are also country-specific domain types, e.g..i