The Domain Name System (DNS) is a globally distributed service that is foundational to the way people use the Internet. DNS uses a hierarchical name structure, and different levels in the hierarchy are each separated with a dot ( . ). Consider the domain names www.amazon.com and aws.amazon.com. In both these examples, “com” is the Top-Level Domain and “amazon” the Second-Level Domain. There can be any number of lower levels (e.g., “www” and “aws”) below the Second-Level Domain. Computers use the DNS hierarchy to translate human readable names like www.amazon.com into the IP addresses like 192.0.2.1 that computers use to connect to one another.
Route 53 is an “authoritative DNS” system. An authoritative DNS system provides an update mechanism that developers use to manage their public DNS names. It then answers DNS queries, translating domain names into IP address so computers can communicate with each other.
The name for our service (Route 53) comes from the fact that DNS servers respond to queries on port 53 and provide answers that route end users to your applications on the Internet. In the future, we will add additional routing capabilities to Route 53 to better help your users find the best way to your website or application.