6  Using DNS at home

• When you are accessing the WWW from home, you may not be aware that you are using IP addresses because you normally access webpages using Uniform Resource Locators (URLs).
• However, all the packets that are exchanged between your home device and the web server require IP addresses to ensure that they are delivered correctly, so the Domain Name Services (DNS) is required to map between URLs and IP addresses.
• DNS servers contain these mappings between IP addresses and URLs. Thousands of DNS servers, spread across the world, are required to support the operation of the Internet.
• In order for your local LAN device to access DNS, it must know the IP address of the DNS server that the local ISP wishes it to use. Once again this information is learnt dynamically using DHCP.