As a one-stop shop for all your IT requirements The Red Penguin Group Ltd manages and hosts most of our customers websites / DNS records and other hosting accounts. Its all to do with DNS but what is DNS and what does it mean to your business?
DNS
DNS or Domain Name System is essentially a directory telling devices where to go to get connected to stuff. The internet has around 6 billion websites not including sub-sites. When you type www.redpenguin.it into a browser there is a system in place that converts that string of text into a unique number (called a IP address) – This unique number is then used to allow your computer to connect/communicate with our website.
But DNS is so much more than the mechanism used to allow end users to type in web addresses its also the system that allows email to work , file sharing, alias names etc etc.
So how does it work?
So lets assume you have a domain name , Lets take redpenguin.it for example. Our domain name is hosted with our DNS hosting partner. Hosting companies (like Go Daddy / 123Reg et al) will usually control the domain and you access via a control panel.
The hosting company will manage access to this domain via its Name Servers – These are in essence like the butler telling incoming connections where to go to get the data required. Different stuff has different DNS records, So for example websites will be associated with an A record and email traffic (so if someone emailed a @redpenguin.it address) that would be linked to a MX record
So lets imagine you booted up your laptop and you wanted to access www.tested.com , you type the address into your address bar and hit go the first thing that will happen is the request will get sent to your router (Gateway) , this will then be forwarded onto your broadband provider (ISP), Your ISP will then send out that request to the ‘Internet’ where any number of dedicated DNS servers will report back the specifics of what IP address www.tested.com relates too. This is filtered back to your computer and the website is displayed.
Obviously this all happens pretty much instantly however if you are trying to access a website that is hosted in a different country (lets say Germany) then your ISP will have to request the data through multiple different servers (hops) so first the request might go to a server in London, then across to a server in France and finally onto a server in say Germany. This is way some websites can take longer to load than others
So how about email? Well again lets say you send a email to us, your computer will send that request to your router etc – The various servers will know that its a email and as such they also know to look for the required DNS MX record (mail server) of your recipient but then fundamental principle of acquiring the information is the same.
Its not just connections outside your network that use DNS though internal networks are critically reliant on DNS – Take for example a file server that you might use to store all your critical company data. You have a shortcut or mapped drive on your computer that points to your companies ‘N’ drive. In the background chances are that the N drive is actually mapped to the full path name of your company data maybe something like \\Fileserver\company data\accounts well if your computer does not know where ‘fileserver’ is then you cannot access the data.
Your computers will effectively report their IP address to your network equipment so that when you request data from ‘fileserver’ your internal network equipment knows to send your request to your fileserver. The same is true for lots of internal stuff think printers
Why does it matter to my business?
Now you know what DNS is and how it basically controls access to all things related to networks (internal and external) you should also now know that effective DNS management is critical.
Lets say you forget to renew your domain name. That will lead to your website not working but it also means your email is likely to stop working too. Change broadband supplier? Have you updated your server to use the correct DNS forwarders? If not internet stops working on all your company computers along with email / file server access and also things like printing could go down too.
How we can help
We have a long standing relationship with a UK based hosting provider, they have top spec resilient and incredibly secure UK based data centres and as such we can manage DNS and domains for your companies domain names as well as ensuring your internal network is up to scratch. Our hosting packages allow for web hosting and FTP access and start at just £7.50 + Vat per month.
We can host your .co.uk domain for just £10 + Vat per year or your .com domain for just £15 + Vat per year.
We can secure your website with a SSL certificate so that visitors don’t get the dreaded ‘this page is not secure’ error.
Get in touch today.