Reverse DNS in real life - a podcast by Kent C. Dodds

from 2021-02-22T16:05:35

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Hey there friends. So this is another one of those computer science topics
in the real world. So the other day I was picking up my son from school andthey have this the very efficient system for picking up kids because it and
they don't have school bus or anything.
So everybody's picking up their kids at the same time. And so they have to
be efficient. And so you put this number on your car and like windshield sothat they know and then they look it up in their phone and and send a
message to let that kid.Know it's their turn to come out for their parents. And my son who was with
me the other another son who I wasn't picking up but he was in the car with
me any said, why did you like what how does Nathan know when to come outand I said well we have this number and that's on my on the car and and
they look at that up and some sort of spreadsheet or an app on their phoneor something and then they send that number over to the people who tell the
kids that it's time for.
Them to go. And and I realize that that's very much like DNS. So we have it
except sort of in the reverse. So where it's easier for us to do a number
because then they don't have to like we don't have to tell them or they
don't have to read the name and then misread it or something a number is
just easier for them.But it's like the opposite of DNS where we take a URL or a domain and so
like Google.com or or something. And and we look it up in a table thathave.As that domain name associated to a specific IP address. And and once
you identify that IP address then the packets and everything on the networkcan go find the server that respond or that is assigned to that IP address.
And yeah that was just kind of an interesting interesting thing we justfound it inefficient way to pick up our kids by using reverse DNS where we
give a number and that maps to a person. So anyway,Just thought that waskind of interesting and if you don't know about DNS that's something that
can be useful to know about.So go give that a look. In fact, I'll just check really quick as MDN have
an article MDN is just awesome about these sorts of topics. So let me seeif they they do have a web docs glossary and they have just a very short
thing on DNS, but it also has some links to to other articles and thingsthat you can go look it up.
So yeah, look at the MTN web docs. Okay, take care bye.

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