What is a DNS? when it is necessary?

[Sara Valoti SK]

Hello everyone,

Sorry for the elementary question: when should I check the DNS? Only when I specify the domain?
What if I don't specify the domain? is it mandatory or not? what advantages do I get in specifying it?

thank you very much in advance!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

DNS is the acronym for "Domain name service".  It is a service that translates site names into their actual address.  For example, community.atlassian.com is not a site address, it is a name that has several real IP addresses behind it.  You use DNS to lookup a real address given a name.

You automatically "check the DNS" every time you specify a remote host name instead of an actual IP address  to connect to with a browser, a REST call, a remote shell (telnet or ssh for example), and anything else you might do over a network.  The whole point of using DNS is that you resolve a domain to the actual address it is present on.

So, I  am not sure what you mean by "when should I check the DNS".  What are you trying to do here?