DNS or Domain Name System is a large-scale distributed database on the Internet that enables us to use domain names to identify resources on the Internet instead of IP addresses. If you want to contact a web site, FTP server, or email server on the Internet, you use DNS like a telephone book to resolve the domain name into an IP address. You first send a DNS request to a DNS server and then send a request for a particular service to the IP address you got back. If your DNS lookup fails (for instance because the DNS server of your ISP is down) you have no IP address and cannot contact the service, a common failure on the Internet.

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