This chapter was all about hostnames and DNS queries. We covered how the DNS works, and we learned that resolving a hostname can involve many UDP packets being sent over the network.
We looked at getaddrinfo() in more depth and showed why it is usually the preferred way to do a hostname lookup. We also looked at its sister function, getnameinfo(), which is capable of converting an address to text or even doing a reverse DNS query.
Finally, we implemented a program that sent DNS queries from scratch. This program was a good learning experience to better understand the DNS protocol, and it gave us a chance to gain experience in implementing a binary protocol. When implementing a binary protocol, we had to pay special attention to byte order. For the simple DNS message format, this was achieved by carefully interpreting bytes one at a time.
Now that we've worked with...
