Why write a DNS client When I started digging in to DNS, I thought it would be interesting to try implementing a very simple DNS client similar to dig, but using Rust. My goal was to better understand DNS at the protocol level. I wanted to know what bytes were being sent and received to drive the system. The final result is in this repo). In the rest of the post, I’ll detail what I found out along the way....
As a follow up to my DNS post, I started trying to answer “Who’s in charge of all this?”. Basically, I wanted to know what keeps me from claiming a different domain name or for that matter for claiming a different IP address. I went down a rabbit hole of RFC’s and never quite pulled out the answer to my question, but I wanted to post what I did find out since it’s been languishing in my drafts for too long....
Domain Name System: End to End We all interact with the Domain Name System (DNS) every day. Every time we load a web page, or click a link, our software relies on DNS to figure out what address to send requests to. In this post, I will dig into how DNS works by tracing through the machinery that happens behind the scenes. What is the purpose of DNS? It is first worth calling out what DNS is and why anybody should care about it....