Dns Lookup Tools

Getting started online means the time of confusing initials tossed about with little explanation. While you may have domain names, registration, web hosting, the talk of IP Addresses and DNS sounds like something you should study elsewhere. These are actually things that help your website be found online.

What is DNS?

This is your Domain Name Server, thus DNS. It is where your Domain Name “lives” and it translates your Domain Name into an IP Address.

What is an IP Address?

This is actually a series of numbers broken up by periods as 191.68.121.42 or other such number. While you and I read domainname.com our computers read those numbers. That is the address of your website.

Back to your Domain Name Server.

If you bought your domain name from a domain name registrar and you were probably told by your web host to transfer your DNS to the Web host DNS. What you are doing is changing the lookup information for your domain. The lookup information is where the internet looks up your website.

What does lookup information mean?

Here is a translation involving your address. Your domain name is changing the physical address. It still has a mailing address over at the domain name registrar but if you want to visit the domain you have to go to the physical address.

While the website does not have an actual physical address, the DNS tells the internet where to look up your website. When you got the email from your web host you received at least two DNS servers. These servers tell the internet where your domain name actually is.

Did you know you have a record?

When you transfer your DNS, you transfer several pieces of information, called a “DNS record” which includes Your domain name, your “A” record, your “MX” record, and some other pieces of information.

What is “A” record?

This is the what tells the internet which DNS is actually yours. It is sort of like having the address number outside your home door. It says which server is the “Authority” of your domain name.

What about the “MX” Record?

This is the mail server that accepts mail for your domain. You want your mail to go with your domain name and this record helps keep the two together.

What happens after I change the DNS?

After you change your DNS you must wait for propagation. This may take up to 72 hours for all the servers around the world to realize that your domain name is no longer at the old DNS but is now at the new DNS. It will probably take less time.

Do I need to know all this?

No, all you need to know is what is the DNS of your web host. Then change the DNS at your domain name registrar to the DNS of your web host. This will connect your domain name to the IP address of your website, which means people can type in your domain name and get to your website. While you may not understand all of this process you at least have a basic understanding of why you must change your DNS.

With more than 5,000 web hosting companies on the Internet, consumers are looking for a short cut to finding the best service for their business and personal requirements. A little known secret from the “geek” community can greatly simplify the process of finding the perfect match for you.

Since the mid-1990’s, a company in Bath, England called Netcraft has been providing free research data and analysis on many aspects of the Internet. They are a respected authority on web hosting providers, operating systems, ISP’s, electronic commerce, encryption, and content technologies, to name but a few. Netcraft is the place where webmasters and other information technology professionals go when they want answers to solve real-world problems. Fortunately, one of the best reports Netcraft produces is an on-line near-real-time web host performance report. It provides performance data on about 50 of the top web hosting companies on the Internet. Incredibly, the report is free and updated every 15 minutes.

Netcraft’s Hosting Providers Network Performance report can best serve those who are seeking to locate a reliable hosting service. It tracks outages over the past 24 hours providing the hours, minutes, and seconds of outages. Performance monitoring agents are operating in the USA and the UK so that the network performance can be determined from different points. Web hosting performance is comprised of the time to process the http GET request and return the page contents. The time reported depends on the speed of the processor, the size of the data, the number of concurrent requests being processed by the web server and so forth. Dynamic content generally requires more time than static content. During the http GET request Netcraft records four times: (1) DNS (2) connect (3) first byte, and (4) total.

The DNS category provides performance information on the time it takes for the Domain Name Service (DNS) to lookup the hostname. The customer’s local name server as well as the authoritative name server for the domain affects DNS response time. Due to the wide variability of this performance parameter it is not part of the total time recorded. The connect performance parameter is the first phase of the http GET request when the TCP/IP connection is made to the web hosting server. Connect is typically reflective of network latency but if the web host is under heavy load the time recorded will increase. The first byte performance parameter is the time from when the last byte of the http GET request is sent until the first byte of the response header is received. Although many different factors, including application associated processing, are involved this performance parameter is generally useful in determining how fast the web hosting server is responding. From a performance perspective this is the silver bullet because studies have shown that consumers purchase more often and in higher dollar amounts from fast performing web servers. The last performance parameter is the total, which is the time from when the http GET request is started until the last byte is received.

Can selecting a great web hosting provider really be so simple as looking at web hosting performance reports? Well, yes and no. If you are simply looking for the best virtual web hosting company using Netcraft’s web hosting performance report can help you select from the 1% of hosting companies who are so confident in their service that they pay Netcraft to monitor and publish the results for everyone to see. The chances are very good that companies willing to do this will do everything possible to keep their operation running as competitively as possible. Of course, you still need to determine which of these best 50 companies can satisfy your needs in terms of operating system support, programming languages supported, and so forth. You can save yourself lots of valuable research time by using iTechGuide’s Top Performance Web Hosting Companies table to help further identify the best web hosting company for your needs.

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