Have you ever wondered why, on rare occasions, a web site you visit regularly suddenly just "disappears"? After all, it's a huge web site, they have zillions of users, and every time you go there, there's lots of new items, great deals, loads of messages .... Surely they've not closed down? But, however many times you hit the "Refresh" or "Reload" button, you keep getting this same message... 

 "Cannot find server or DNS error".

DNS plays a major role in the way the internet actually works, and yet it is possibly one of the least talked about (and least understood) components. Without it, many web sites would, quite simply, "fall off the net", and emails would fail to find their destinations.

By working your way through the sections in our Main Menu we hope that you'll gain a better understanding of what DNS is, how it works and, if you have a domain and website of your own, some of the steps you can take to avoid falling foul of DNS errors.

So let's make a start - Firstly we'll try to explain a little about what DNS does, and then our lead story is about the day we checked the DNS servers of one of the largest internet presences in the world, Yahoo!'s domain yahoo.com.

To make a start, simply click on the menu item "What DNS Does".

Our Worldwide DNS Servers