Domain Names, Web Hosting and SSL Certificates - Go Daddy. Web Hosting, Domain Name Registration - Affordable Web Hosting and Domain Name Search. Domain Name Server records. When packet switching networks were first developed, addressing was exclusively numerical. With networks such as The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), there was little need for developing alternative methods as the number of participating nodes were limited. However, as the network expanded, it soon became evident that while using numerics was a very methodical approach, the addresses themselves proved increasingly hard for humans to memorize. The first solution was to distribute a file called ‘hosts.txt’ to all the nodes of the network, allowing them to map names to the addresses.
However, keeping such a centralized system up-to-date would prove difficult. It was clear that a more scalable and automated solution was needed. In 1982, the original system was replaced by the Domain Name System (DNS), which is a hierarchical distribution system that allows IP-addresses and domain names to be assigned to each other in both directions.