Communication · 1983

Domain Name System

Human-readable names like example.com replace numeric addresses, in a distributed hierarchy.

Paul Mockapetris designed DNS in 1983 to replace a single hosts file that no longer scaled. Its hierarchy of delegated servers answers trillions of lookups a day and made the internet navigable by name.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

TCP/IP 1974

What it led to 1

World Wide Web 1991

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Internet users in the United States Latest: 322M people (2024) Source: Our World in Data

Share of people online Latest: 73.6 % (2025) Source: Our World in Data