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2 – Domain Names, IP Addresses and DNS

🎯 Learning Objectives

  • What is a domain name and why we use them.
  • What are IP addresses and why we use them.
  • What is DNS and how it works and uses both domain names and IP addresses.

💬 Key Vocabulary

  • domain name
  • IP address
  • Domain Name Server (DNS)
  • Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
  • Top Level Domain (TLD)

📖 URLs and Domain Names

  • Look at your browser’s address bar. What ever is written there is the URL of the page you are on. What ever is written there after the http://www but before the first / is the domain name of the site you are on.

You’ll be very familiar with some domain names like:

google.com
facebook.com
yahoo.com
youtube.com
wikipedia.org

Add a description of URLs and Domain Names to a new Word document.

  • There are lots of Top Level Domains available to website owners.
  • .com, .org, and .co.uk are just some of a few.
  • Gather a list of 10 other Top Level Domains that are available and add them to your Word document.
  • Then explain what a Top Level Domain is and give some examples in your notes.

🌐 IP addresses

  • Domain names are a little like addresses. For instance, the Prime Minister lives at:
10 Downing Street
London,
SW1A 2AA
  • This is nice and easy for humans to say and remember.
  • Another way of saying where the Prime Minister lives would be to use Longitude and Latitude.
51° 30′ 12.23″ N, 0° 7′ 39.5″ W
  • This is tricky for a human to remember but great for a computer.
  • Domain names are like addresses, they are designed for humans to read and remember. In reality a computer’s address (that allows other computers on a network or the internet to find it), is made up of numbers.
  • Computer use IP addresses to send messages to each other.

Your computer’s current IP address should be shown below.

  • We need domain names because IP addresses are too difficult for humans to remember.
  • Imagine typing in this every time you needed to go to a certain web address. Try the following in your home browser and see where each of the IP addresses takes you to. Note: those will not work inside school as accessing websites by IP addresses are blocked.
http://216.58.198.163

Present It

  • Answer the following questions in your notes.
    • What is a domain name?
    • What is an IP address?
    • Why do humans not use IP addresses?

📛 DNS

You can use the following animated tutorial to help you understand how DNS work

Watch this video if you still aren’t sure what DNS is and how it works.

In this lesson, you…

  • Explored the technical side of the internet by looking at Domain Names, IP addresses and DNS.

Next lesson, you will…

  • Use Scratch to model a DNS using lists and linear search.

🏅 Level up

  • Imagine you had to explain DNS to somebody who had no idea what it was.
  • Using whatever software you like (or pen and paper if you prefer), create a piece of work that you could use to help explain DNS to someone. You could create a poster, a presentation, a report, an illustrated art work. It’s really up to you.
  • You’ll be awarded Level 2 or 3, depending on your teacher’s assessment of your understanding of DNS.

🥇 Level 1

  • Upload your notes on Domain Names, IP Addresses and DNS.

🥈 Level 2

  • Your piece of work shows a good understanding of DNS.

🥉 Level 3

  • Your piece of work shows excellent understanding of DNS.