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 When using the Internet most people connect to web sites, ftp servers or other Internet servers by connecting to a domain name, as in www.mydomain.com. Internet applications, though, do not communicate via domain names, but rather using IP addresses, such as 192.168.1.1. Therefore when you type a domain name in your program that you wish to connect to, your application must first convert it to an IP address that it will use to connect to.
The way these hostnames are resolved to their mapped IP address is called Domain Name Resolution. On almost all operating systems whether they be Apple, Linux, Unix, Netware, or Windows the majority of resolutions from domain names to IP addresses are done through a procedure called DNS.
As discussed above, Domain Name Resolution is the task of converting domain names to their corresponding IP address. This is all done behind the scenes and is rarely noticed by the user. When you enter a domain name in an application that uses the Internet, the application will issue a command to have the operating system convert the domain name into its IP address, and then connect to that IP address to perform whatever operation it is trying to do. The way the operating system resolves the domain name is based upon its configuration. For almost all operating systems the default order for Domain Name resolution is as follows: |
- Hosts File - There is a file called the HOSTS file that you can use to convert domain names to IP addresses. Entries in the HOSTS file override any mappings that would be resolved via a DNS server.
- Domain Name System - This is the system used on the Internet for converting domain names to their corresponding IP addresses. Your operating system will connect to the DNS server configured on your computer and have that server return to you the IP address for the domain name you queried it with.
- Netbios - This only applies to Windows machines and will only be used to map names to IP addresses if all previous methods failed. This method will attempt to map the netbios name you are trying to connect to with an IP address.
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| It is possible though to change the order that your operating system uses when doing Domain Name Resolution. We will discuss these methods for the Windows and Unix/Linux operating systems below. |
Windows by default uses the above order for Domain Name Resolution. This can be changed though by changing certain registry keys. The defined registry keys are listed in the table below. 
| Registry Key |
Description |
| DnsPriority |
Which corresponds to using the Domain Name System |
| LocalPriority |
This refers to the local name of the computer |
| HostsPriority |
This is the HOSTS file |
| NetbtPriority |
This is using Netbios name mapping |
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Unix and Linux have a similar default Domain Name Resolution order as Windows. The operating system will first check its /etc/hosts file and if it does not find an entry for the queried domain, it will then query its configured DNS servers. |
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