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CompTIA Network+ 3.4 Cisco CCNA 4.3
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Where Does the DNS Answer Come From?

Where is each name lookup answered?

⚑ Complete this interactive to capture a CTF flag worth 5 points.

About this interactive

From the lesson, the whole path: 1. **The hosts file** on the PC: a hand-made list of names and addresses, checked first. 2. **The PC's own cache:** answers it looked up before, until their TTL runs out. 3. **The company DNS server:** it answers for its own internal zone (example.local, kept off the internet) and from its cache, filled by everyone else's lookups. 4. **Forwarded out:** for a name it is not in charge of and has not cached, it forwards to an outside DNS server (the ISP's, or one such as OpenDNS), which asks the root, TLD and domain servers if it must. Each server on the way back caches the answer.

What you'll learn

Aligned to

CompTIA Network+
3.4 Given a scenario, implement IPv4 and IPv6 network services.
Cisco CCNA
4.3 Explain the role of DHCP and DNS within the network

Key terms

Hosts File
A local file on a computer that maps hostnames to IP addresses and is checked before any DNS query is made.
DNS Caching
The local storage of DNS query results so that future requests for the same domain can be resolved without repeating the full lookup process.
Internal DNS Zone
A DNS zone configured on a private network to resolve internal resources using private top-level domains such as .local, without exposing those resources externally.
Caching Server
A server that stores copies of DNS query results to serve repeated requests from multiple clients without forwarding each query to authoritative DNS servers.
hostname resolution
The process of translating a human-readable hostname into its corresponding IP address so network communication can occur.

Topics

Dns Hosts File Dns Caching Internal Dns Zone Interactive Categorize

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