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How DO knows that it is my domain name

Posted on August 25, 2020

It’s a question about DigitalOcean and other providers in general regarding DNS. Suppose I bought a domain name, pointed them to DO DNS servers and added A record to my domain settings on DO. And that works now DNS will point to my droplet when my domain name is searched. But question is how to know it is my domain name? For example, if let’s say Wikipedia was running on DO platform, then I could add wikipedia domain name to my domain settings and requests for wikipedia would point to my droplet?

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KFSys

August 25, 2020

Hi @1zarkos1,

You question is good, this is why Nameservers are being used. In order make your domain’s DNS settings you have configured with DigitalOcean work, you’ll need to use DigitalOcean’s Nameservers.

Nameservers shows the world or when you try to open a website, from where the DNS settings should be loaded. When your browser opens a website, it checks the Nameservers, sends a request to those Nameservers for the domain you are trying to open and those NameServers return a request on which IP it is.

In regards to your question, you can try adding WikiPedia to DigitalOcean or any other patlform but when you try to open the website since the NameServers are different it won’t even know i will exsist here.

Think of DNS as phonebooks. In each phonebook there is a name and a phone. Now Imagine you live in New York. Even if your phone is added to the California phonebook, nobody would search there as you live in New York. Now if you change your address to be in California, nobody would search your phone in the New York phone’s book. That’s exactly how DNS work however instead of place of living, NameServers are being used and the exact phonebooks are DNS records.

Regards, KFSys

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