Domain Naming System (DNS) is a hierarchical naming system for resources connected to the Internet or a private network. Primarily, DNS resources translate domain names into IP addresses. If one DNS server doesn't know how to translate a particular domain name, it asks another one until the correct IP address is returned. DNS enables access to resources using human friendly notations. DNS converts human friendly domain names into notations used by different networking equipment for locating resources.
As a resource is accessed (using human-friendly hostnames), it's possible to access the resource even if the underlying machine friendly notation name changes. Without DNS, in the simplest terms, you would need to remember a series of numbers (123.123.123.123) instead of an easy to remember domain name (for example, www.domainname.com).
To define the DNS configuration:
| Domain Name | Provide the default Domain Name used to resolve DNS names. The name cannot exceed 64 characters. |
| Enable Domain Lookup | Select the check box to enable DNS. When enabled, human friendly domain names are converted into numerical IP destination addresses. The radio button is selected by default. |
| DNS Server Forwarding | Select this option to enable the forwarding DNS queries to external DNS servers if a DNS query cannot be processed by local DNS resources. This feature is disabled by default. |
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Name Servers |
Provide a list of up to three DNS servers to forward DNS queries if local DNS resources are unavailable. The DNS name servers are used to resolve IP addresses. Use the Clear link (next to each DNS server) to clear the DNS name server's IP address from the list. |