Dynamic domain name resolution

1. A user program sends a name query to the resolver of the DNS client.

2. The DNS resolver looks up the local domain name cache for a match. If the resolver finds a match, it sends the corresponding IP address back. If not, it sends a query to the DNS server.

3. The DNS server looks up the corresponding IP address of the domain name in its DNS database. If no match is found, the server sends a query to a higher level DNS server. This process continues until a result, whether successful or not, is returned.

4. After receiving a response from the DNS server, the DNS client returns the resolution result to the application.

Figure 40 shows the relationship between the user program, DNS client, and DNS server.

The DNS client is made up of the resolver and cache. The user program and DNS client can run on the same device or different devices, but the DNS server and the DNS client usually run on different devices.

Dynamic domain name resolution allows the DNS client to store latest mappings between domain names and IP addresses in the dynamic domain name cache. The DNS client does not need to send a request to the DNS server for a repeated query next time. The aged mappings are removed from the cache after some time, and latest entries are required from the DNS server. The DNS server decides how long a mapping is valid, and the DNS client gets the aging information from DNS messages.

The DNS client holds a list of suffixes which the user sets. The resolver can use the list to supply the missing part of incomplete names.

For example, a user can configure com as the suffix for aabbcc.com. The user only needs to type aabbcc to obtain the IP address of aabbcc.com because the resolver adds the suffix and delimiter before passing the name to the DNS server.

• If there is no dot (.) in the domain name (for example, aabbcc), the resolver considers this a host name and adds a DNS suffix before the query. If no match is found after all the configured suffixes are used, the original domain name (for example, aabbcc) is used for the query.

• If there is a dot (.) in the domain name (for example, www.aabbcc), the resolver directly uses this domain name for the query. If the query fails, the resolver adds a DNS suffix for another query.

• If the dot (.) is at the end of the domain name (for example, aabbcc.com.), the resolver considers it a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) and returns the query result, successful or failed. The dot (.) is considered a terminating symbol.

The device supports static and dynamic DNS client services.

	NOTE: If an alias is configured for a domain name on the DNS server, the device can resolve the alias into the IP address of the host.