When you browse the Internet your Web browsers looks up something called DNS (Domain Name System) to map a domain name e.g. markbuhagiar.com to an IP address e.g. 61.95.78.225. In very basic and general terms, computers on the Internet each have a unique IP address. Those computers (usually servers) in turn hold the files that make up your web page.

So if we think of the analogy of using the physical White Pages to look up somebody's phone number, the first thing we do is look up their name and then once we have found it, we scan across and get their phone number. This is exactly what DNS does. The browser asks DNS to look up an IP address for it. It gives DNS the name (e.g. markbuhagiar.com) and DNS responds with an IP address (like the phone number) of the server which currently holds your web site files.

In a similar way to you then picking up the phone and ringing that phone number you looked up, the browser then "calls" the web server using that IP address that DNS gave it. I am being a little bit simplistic because there are a bunch of other factors (e.g. ports, host headers, etc) which come into play but all of that is for the IT geeks not you.

All you need to know is that.....