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Episode 2
Road trip
It seems that we are out onto the streets
There is a beam of light that is already underneath the ground, where is it going?
The beam of light keeps going under ground
Is is a long or short trip? Who knows?
Oh, it seems we are traveling up the wall now. Weird stuff
We know that the beam can travel horizontally as well as vertically. Data, data, data.
We seemed to have reached our destination. It's the resolver inbox!
The resolver inbox looks like a fax machine. This is so 1985 tech.
RESOLVER INBOX
It's a fax machine. OMG. Puh-puh-please
The best way to represent the complex inside machinery of a fax machine: GRR, GRRR
RESOLVER INBOX
PEW
GRR
GRR
The fax is done printing the request, but it seems to be falling on the floor
Please don't drop the request. Don't break the chain. Never break a chain. Especially when it comes from the OS
We seem to have reached the top of a flat surface. TOC. Is that wood?
What kind of weight of paper is this? To make a TOC sound, you at least need a page of 900gr
TOC
Did we wake up this fella?
Can a server sleep? The answer yes. We all know this because of Heroku free tier
The resolver seems pretty happy to have a new request
I love when people go from totally asleep to totally awake. I wish I could do that
A new request for me?
A-W-E-S-O-M-E
The resolver reads the fax and the request is to indeed find the domain dnsimple.com
Servers can read? Or are they still using that funky OCR technology
dnsimple.com? Sure thing!
It seems that resolvers also have a cache. Having a cache seems to be the hot thing in the internet
Note that checking your cache can make you sweat. Everybody dance now
another.ninja
donteat.me
poolsarecool.net
small.website
datacenter.tours
totally.gold
zone.vision
mini.golf
Checking my cache first...
The resolver does not know about dnsimple. What can we do now?
You also keep on sweating when you notice that you don't know a thing about the domain that you have been requested
Not there!
How can I find this website?
Yay! Road trip to ask the root!
I personally enjoy road trips. And when they are DNS related, even more
Let’s ask the root!
R
O
A
D
T
R
I
P
Blue cat explains that the resolver is usually our ISP. Oh, that make sense
A server with one mission only. Find that root baby
The resolver server is usually your
ISP (Internet Service Provider). All
resolvers must know one thing: where
to locate the root server.
Resolver
The root server can locate the TLD server. In our case, it's a .COM TLD server
So that thing at the end of a domain means that we have a TLD server for each domain name suffix
The root server knows where to
locate the .COM TLD server. TLD
stands for Top-Level Domain.
We seem to have boarded a flight to the root
Yuck, that's not a road trip. Please make it a road trip next time
Ladies and gentleman, welcome to flight
R0XX to the root server. The weather is…
Not my kind
of road trip!
Luckily the flight was short
But if you really calculate the time that it took you to go the airport, wait for the TSA, etc.. Is driving faster?
A few milliseconds later…
We have reached our destination
Economy class is really packed on this airplane. Fly first class if you can
Thank you for flying with us. We hope to
welcome you on board again.
Finally!
The resolver is rushing to what it seems to be a very bureaucratic office
Don't run through the aisles like this. Even less with scissors
Oh boy! I hope root is here!
There is a door and it says: ROOT
Like an old school detective door. I like where this is going
R O O T
The root speaks from inside his office. He seems busy
I mean, of course the root is going to be busy. Everyone is coming to ask for their stuff to him.
R
T
Who’s there? What do you seek?
Will the resolver find his way to dnsimple.com?
Find out in the next episode of
how DNS works.
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