Note: Many topics at this site are reduced versions of the text in "The Encyclopedia of Networking and Telecommunications." Search results will not be as extensive as a search of the book's CD-ROM.

Resolver services are generally designed to resolve a name into an address. For example, DNS (Domain Name Service) translates a Web site name such as www.whitehouse.gov into an IP address. When you enter this address into a Web browser's Address field, the Web browser first contacts a DNS server to resolve the name. DNS returns the IP address to your Web browser, which then sends packets to the IP address it was given. Part of this process is locating a suitable DNS server that can resolve the address. Web browsers have a Setup field where the IP address of a primary and secondary DNS server can be found.

There are many other resolver services. In the Windows environment, NetBIOS naming was used for many years as the LAN protocol of choice.

Some interesting new resolver services have emerged to help users find documents on the Internet, independent of their location. The idea is not to rely on a specific Web site address, since Web site locations or the files stored at those locations may change at any time, causing hyperlinks to fail to reference documents at those sites. The resolver service keeps track of documents and provides users with the latest Web address. Web site developers keep the resolver service posted of any changes in with their Web site addresses. A resolver discovery service is a service that finds a resolver service.

The important part of this scheme is that documents can contain hyperlinked references to documents that do not rely on physical addresses that might change. See "URN (Uniform Resource Name)" and "Handle System."

Other types of resolver services are discussed under "Search and Discovery Services" and "Service Advertising and Discovery."

Copyright (c) 2001 Tom Sheldon and Big Sur Multimedia.
All rights reserved under Pan American and International copyright conventions.