It was a kind of confusion for me for such as long time, which was how to setup DNS server to host a website. Today it has been all clarified and thanks to my director Jason Vogt.
The "Registrar" is the king of Domain Name world. All the domain name must be registered there and declare which "Name Server" this domain is using. All the registering service affiliates are connecting to the "Registrar" and updating the domain name information, such as Yahoo! or GoDaddy. To find out who owns the domain name, we can easily go to http://www.whois-lookup.com/ and query the information. The information listed will include the person or company who owns the domain name, contact info, name server info.
Then the "Registrar" will point the domain name to the name server. The name server takes all the responsibilities to route the web traffic, relay emails and etc. There are 5 major things need to be configured in name server: Starts of Authority, Name server, MX record, A record and C record. The "Start of Authority" is to match the information with the "Registrar", and "Name server" indicates the Domain Name/IP match. The "MX record" is for email settings, including SMTP/POP server information (might be IMAP or Http also), while "A record" and "C record" refers to Affiliate and Host information respectively. In this case, we can see Name server, A record and C record are web server related and MX record is email server related information.
When the Name server routes the web traffic to the specifically indicated web server, the web server will parse the request and read the Http Header information. if the Http Header matches one of the website in this server, then web server to pass the request to this website and the website will handle it, and send Http Response back. Then this is the full circle of one Http Transaction.
This is to help myself understand the web traffic better, and hope other people can take benefit from it too!
The "Registrar" is the king of Domain Name world. All the domain name must be registered there and declare which "Name Server" this domain is using. All the registering service affiliates are connecting to the "Registrar" and updating the domain name information, such as Yahoo! or GoDaddy. To find out who owns the domain name, we can easily go to http://www.whois-lookup.com/ and query the information. The information listed will include the person or company who owns the domain name, contact info, name server info.
Then the "Registrar" will point the domain name to the name server. The name server takes all the responsibilities to route the web traffic, relay emails and etc. There are 5 major things need to be configured in name server: Starts of Authority, Name server, MX record, A record and C record. The "Start of Authority" is to match the information with the "Registrar", and "Name server" indicates the Domain Name/IP match. The "MX record" is for email settings, including SMTP/POP server information (might be IMAP or Http also), while "A record" and "C record" refers to Affiliate and Host information respectively. In this case, we can see Name server, A record and C record are web server related and MX record is email server related information.
When the Name server routes the web traffic to the specifically indicated web server, the web server will parse the request and read the Http Header information. if the Http Header matches one of the website in this server, then web server to pass the request to this website and the website will handle it, and send Http Response back. Then this is the full circle of one Http Transaction.
This is to help myself understand the web traffic better, and hope other people can take benefit from it too!
