Think of DNS to be like the phone book: to call Mr X Bloggs, you look up the name in some sort of paper or online phone book, call the number, and when there's an answer, you say "hello Mr Bloggs".... On yor PC, when you wish to go to "google.com", your PC needs to use DNS to find out which server to connect to (= its IP address) So how does DNS work? How does your PC know where to do DNS lookups? Most PCs will use DHCP to get their IP address as well as the IP address for the DNS server: at home,that typically comes from your broadband router. The router doesn't actually DO the DNS lookup itself, it typically asks your ISP to do so (the router learned that as part of it's "DHCP", when it connected to the ADSL). Your ISP will then go and do a "full DNS resolve", starting with the ROOT servers, then go to Nominet (who look after the .uk domain), then in my case, to NamesCo, who hosts my DNS. Plusnet then caches that information, an...