Domain Names
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Our nameservers are; -
ns1.krystal.co.uk
ns2.krystal.co.uk
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How does DNS Work?
Machines deal in numbers, on the internet each machine is allocated a unique number, called an IP address. So, for example, www.krystal.co.uk has the IP address 77.72.0.170 Humans, on the other hand, aren't very good at remembering numbers and so the convention of domain names was invented. It is the Domain Name System (or DNS for short)that maps a human-friendly domain name into an IP.
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Why is a distributed DNS system like ours advantageous?
Transfers - If we ever need to move an account between our servers we can very easily because the zone files are separate from the server that holds the site. Therefore moving an account from one server to another is as easy as transferring the files and updating the the A record. Because there is no nameserver change there is no DNS propagation time and no downtime. The move happens instantly. Many companies have just one physical nameserver, which means that if it fails for any reason new lookups will fail as the nameserver responsible for yielding the IP does not respond.
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Zone Files
We store information about the domains we're responsible for and their IPs in text format Zone Files which reside on our nameservers. Something called an A record points to a specific machine and says "The site your are looking for is on THAT machine"
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Go on…
We have 2 different nameservers, physically separate from one another, so that should one fail, requests for IPs will be seamlessly handled by the remaining nameservers. Both would have to fail before anyone noticed a problem. Hypothetically, if a nameserver did ever fail, we would be notified immediately and could start fixing the problem. In the meantime the other servers would take over serving requests until the downed name server was brought back online. At this point we can sync all changes in the zone files between them so that they are in exactly the same state. As far as the end user is concerned there is no downtime, failure to resolve or performance degradation.