What is a DNS server?

[626]

A website I go to isn't work even though my internet is working and when I say fix connection problem it says the DNS server isn't responding.

[Fester Frump]

A DNS server is used to convert the human readable URL (i.e. http://www.yahoo.com) to an IP address.

When you go to a website by it's "name", your PC sends a request to a DNS server to get the IP address for that "name".

[Stephen]

DNS stands for Domain Name Server, it's where website names are stored with their relative IP addresses so when you send a request packet (internet traffic with data), to "google.com", the packet will be forwarded to the DNS server which will look up google's ip address and forward it to there. The same holds true for the return journey of data. If you're having trouble connecting to a website, and your internet works fine (meaning you can visit other sites), the site may either be down, expired, or blocked. If it's a specific part of a website, like "subdomain.domain.com", you should try visiting "domain.com" to ensure the actual server is responding. I hope this helps.

[Shawn H]

It's a phone book for networks. Also - Most of the time using the fix feature for problems related outside of the computer isn't going to work.

If the website isn't working it's either a problem with the website or software components such as Java installed on your computer. "Doesn't work" is pretty broad without error messages or a description of what happens when you navigate to the page.

It's like having a car problem and you asking, "My car is broken what's the problem?"

[GloboTech]

Stephen gave a good explanation of what is a DNS server. If you’re having problem connecting to a website but still able to connect to other site, there’s a few thing you can check to pinpoint the problem. You can try pinging the site and see if you get an answer from the remote server. You can also perform a “tracert” towards the hostname of the server and see the “road” the query takes to reach its destination. What OS are you using by the way ? Depending on what’s the issue, if you’re on windows, you can try running the following command in your “Command Prompt” (cmd) from your windows OS :

Ipconfig /flushdns

If the problem persists, please let me know what OS you use and what are the result of the ping or tracert you can explain a little bit more what's the issue exactly if it persists.