Tools - DNS Lookup

The DNS (Domain Name System) lookup tool translates a domain or website name into an IP address.   It can also translate back from an IP address to a Domain or website name.   

DNS lookups help computers find websites and are useful for troubleshooting and network security.  A DNS lookup can help you identify a suspicious or phishing domain or website, or domains pointing to known malicious IP addresses. 

You can specify either the domain (website) name or the IP address.   With a forward DNS lookup, you specify the domain name (for example, amazon.com) and the system finds and displays the IP address.

To perform a DNS Lookup, select Tools > DNS Lookup, and then click Start.

The IP address (s) are listed under Results.

With a reverse DNS lookup, you specify the IP address and the system finds and displays the domain or website name.

Forward DNS lookup

The forward DNS lookup is most commonly used to find the IP address of a specific domain, for example, the IP address of www.google.com is 173.194.213.104.

DNS resolution process:

• The user opens the browser and enters the website name, e.g. www.google.com.
• The device sends that domain name as a DNS request to the user’s Internet Service Provider (ISP).
• The ISP determines if the domain name has an IP address allocated with that name. If not, the ISP forwards the request to other providers to locate the DNS record that contains the data.
• Once the record is found, the IP address of the domain is returned to the user. Now the user’s computer can communicate with the server directly.

Reverse DNS lookup

A reverse DNS lookup is the opposite of a forward DNS Look up. The steps are the same. The only difference is that with a reverse DNS lookup, you enter the IP address and the system returns the domain name.

You may have seen this error on a website: 'this webpage cannot be found'. This occurs when the servers are busy or the web browser has timed out. This means the DNS cannot discern whether it is a domain name or an IP address.

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