The Story Behind Creating DNS | Paul Mockapetris

This interview is with Paul Mockapetris, the creator of the internet's Domain Name System (DNS). I talked to him about the story behind building it and certain design choices he made.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: read.compose.llc
• The Kickstarter page for it: kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose…

Podcast links:

• YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=LT4iVeUoL18
• Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod…
• Transcript: developing.dev/p/e071-paul-mockapetris

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at workos.com

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(00:40) What computing was like before DNS
(09:02) Why URLs are inverted
(16:33) How DNS works
(20:27) How he migrated the internet to DNS
(25:17) Why do companies host DNS servers
(33:17) What is an RFC
(35:07) How he got into computing
(46:39) Advice for his younger self
(52:56) Outro

Where to find Paul:

• Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mockapetris

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: developing.dev
• X/Twitter: x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman
• Threads: threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Original DNS RFC 882: rfc-editor.org/info/rfc882
• Original DNS RFC 883: rfc-editor.org/info/rfc883