What happens when you type a URL in the browser and press enter?

If you are in any technical profession, I am sure someone at some point has asked you this question. Whether you are an engineer, developer, marketer, or even in sales, it is always good to have a basic understanding of what is going on behind our browsers and how information is transferred to our computers via the internet.

Let’s imagine that you want to access maps.google.com to check the exact time it would take for you to get to your dinner reservation from work.

1. You type maps.google.com into the address bar of your browser.

2. The browser checks the cache for a DNS record to find the corresponding IP address of maps.google.com.

DNS(Domain Name System) is a database that maintains the name of the website (URL) and the particular IP address it links to. Every single URL on the internet has a unique IP address assigned to it. The IP address belongs to the computer which hosts the server of the website we are requesting to access. For example, www.google.com has an IP address of 209.85.227.104. So if you’d like, you can reach www.google.com by typing http://209.85.227.104 on your browser. DNS is a list of URLs, and their IP addresses, like how…