How do DNS servers resolve DNS queries?

When you access a URL (website address) in your browser, your device sends a DNS query through your device's network settings to a DNS resolver it knows about, which responds using the IP address on the Internet where the website is located.

When the DNS resolver receives such a query, it communicates with several types of servers in the chain to find out which DNS server holds the information to answer the query.

First, the resolver communicates with the DNS root server to find out which servers hold the information for the top-level domain (TLD) portion of your DNS query, such as .com or .net. The response to this is 1 or more IP addresses of the TLD servers.

The DNS resolver then communicates with the servers in this list, passes the domain name and TLD to the server, and obtains a response with 1 or more IP addresses for the authoritative name servers for the domain name and TLD.

Finally, the resolver communicates with these authoritative name servers, looks up the fully qualified domain name, and receives 1 or more IP addresses of the servers hosting the desired content.

This information is then returned to the browser running on your computer.

Once your web browser knows the IP address of the website, it communicates with the server via the IP address and displays the web content received that is available at the URL.

Although there are many steps involved, the process of resolving the DNS query and displaying the website content is very quick.