Which of the following services resolves host name to IP Address?

The Domain Name System (DNS) is the hierarchical and distributed naming system used to identify computers and resources reachable through the internet. Its primary function is to translate human-readable hostnames (e.g., www.sans.org) into the numerical IP addresses (e.g., 104.20.1.24) required by networking protocols to locate and route traffic to the correct destination. This resolution process is a fundamental operation for nearly all internet activity, including web browsing and email.

A. Computer Browser: This is a legacy Microsoft Windows service for discovering shared resources on a local network; it does not perform internet-scale hostname-to-IP resolution.

B. DHCP: The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) automatically assigns IP addresses and other network configuration parameters to devices, but it does not resolve hostnames for clients.

D. WINS: Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) is a legacy Microsoft service that resolves NetBIOS names to IP addresses, primarily for older Windows networking environments, not standard internet hostnames.

1. Mockapetris

P. (1987). RFC 1035: Domain Names - Implementation and Specification. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Section 1

"INTRODUCTION

" states

"The domain system is a distributed database. In this model the database is partitioned by name... The DNS provides for the mapping of domain names to addresses and other data." Available at: https://doi.org/10.17487/RFC1035

2. Kurose

J.

& Ross

K. (2017). Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (7th ed.). Pearson. Chapter 2

Section 2.5

"The Internet's Directory Service: DNS

" explains

"The main function of DNS is to translate hostnames to IP addresses." This textbook is widely used in university computer science curricula.

3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) OpenCourseWare. (2018). 6.033 Computer System Engineering

Spring 2018. Lecture 17

"Naming

" describes DNS as the canonical system for mapping human-readable names to network addresses (IP addresses). The lecture notes detail this process as the primary purpose of the DNS protocol.

4. Microsoft Corporation. (2023). DNS overview. Microsoft Learn. The documentation states

"Domain Name System (DNS) is a distributed database that's used to translate a user-friendly domain name

such as www.microsoft.com

to a numerical IP address

such as 192.0.2.1."