If you copy the numerical address and paste it in your browser’s address field, you can still visit that site, assuming the site itself isn’t down. Sometimes DNS servers have glitches, but you can always access a website by using its numerical IP address. You might even want to do this if you’re having trouble accessing a website and need to do so in a hurry. Click the Lookup tab, enter a domain name, then click Lookup. In your /Applications/Utilities folder, there’s a tool called Network Utility. You can find the numerical address for a website, if you want. When you click on a link, your browser sends a request to a Web server to load a page, but that request passes through a DNS server, which stores this information in huge databases containing every single domain recorded listed together with its numerical address. This is what lets your computer find, keeping track of the fact that this domain name corresponds to an IP address of 70.42.185.230, and that numerical address is hosting Macworld’s webpages.

Do you ever wonder how you can click a link on a webpage and quickly zip to another page on a server halfway around the world? Or send an email message to aunt Alice or uncle Bob, using just their simple email addresses? All this depends on DNS, or the Domain Name System.

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