Today we talk DNS. It's very likely that we have come across a DNS server error before. DNS has been around for a long while and it helps in making the internet faster. We've talked about domain names before and we have examined IP addresses. Every platform on the internet has one or more IP addresses depending on how large the platform is and how many places the platform is serving people.
DNS MAKES IT POSSIBLE TO MAP DOMAIN NAMES TO THEIR IP ADDRESSES
It's faster to access a platform that has its server in your country than a platform that has its server a continent away as such huge platforms that must rapidly scale across the globe have servers in multiple continents. When you cross-reference that with the number of web platforms out there, things can get very messy. DNS stands for Domain Name System and what it does is that it matches domain names to IP addresses, you can use IP addresses to access some platforms (if you know their IP address) however it's easier to type in words than in numbers which is why domain names exist in words, be that as it may, the numbers are just as important as they specify the exact location of the platform.
A RELATABLE EXPLANATION
If you tell Alexa or Siri to call a "John Doe" from your contact list, your voice assistant will do it (if the name exists on your contact list), it doesn't mean that the phone number isn't the actual thing that's being called. The easiest way to understand what DNS does is to imagine your phonebook (or your contact app). Your phonebook ties your contact names to their respective numbers. Another example is here on Hashnode, when you search for a user or articles on Hashnode by typing the name of the entity in your search field, you may get multiple results and may have to select from a list of matching names, the reason entities can be called despite the matching names is because they have a unique user ID that is attached to them on the database.
###FINALLY...
In the Hashnode example, the database table that matches user ID and username does something similar to what DNS does. If you have to search for entities with their user ID alone you would be very stressed, its the same way you would be stressed if you have to remember each person's exact number in order to call them. In the event that you're getting a DNS server error, three possibilities are likely; that you have a poor internet connection, the DNS settings are not properly configured or the server you're calling is down. The internet we enjoy today is so multifaceted that one has to marvel at how human minds came together to build it.