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Summary: Review of Development of the Domain Name System
Matthew Renzelmann
March 15, 2007
1 Key Insights and Contribu-
tions
The primary contribution of this paper was its dis-
cussion of a replacement for the increasingly cum-
bersome hosts.txt name resolution system. Before
DNS, the mapping between host names and addresses
was maintained on a single, central server. Clients
would periodically download a complete list, called
hosts.txt, from this server.
The scalability limitations of this scheme are ob-
vious, which is why the DNS was developed. DNS
replaces the centralized system discussed above with
a hierarchy of servers. This hierarchy, consisting of
a small set of root servers and a much larger set
of localized "resolver" and "name" servers, allows
for much greater scalability than the original system
since clients often receive the necessary information
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