What is DNS, really?
A short, plain-language explanation with no jargon.
The short version
Computers talk to each other using numbers — 203.0.113.10. People are bad at
remembering numbers. DNS is the phone book that turns
myname.ajaira.site into that number, every single time
somebody visits.
What happens when someone opens your site
- Their browser asks a resolver: “what is the address of
myname.ajaira.site?” - The resolver works down the chain — root servers, then
.site, then the servers responsible forajaira.site. - Those servers answer with whatever you put in your DNS records.
- The browser connects to that address and asks for your page.
All of that usually takes a few dozen milliseconds.
What a TTL is
Every answer comes with a “time to live” — how long resolvers may remember it before asking again. A one-hour TTL means a change you make can take up to an hour to be visible to someone who looked recently. Lower it before a planned change, raise it afterwards.
Why your change “hasn't worked yet”
Almost always caching, not a broken record. Check what the world actually sees:
dig +short myname.ajaira.sitedig +short myname.ajaira.site @1.1.1.1If the second command shows your new value and your browser does not, the answer is somewhere in a cache between you and it. Wait out the TTL.