The Theater of Names

How do DNS and TLS work?

A puppet show in two acts, about what happens in the blink between typing a web address and seeing the page.

Act one · DNS

Your browser asks a lookup helper to find nbaronia.com’s Internet Protocol (IP) address. The helper asks the root servers, then the .com registry, then the site’s own nameserver, and brings the answer home.

Act two · TLS

Before they talk, the browser checks the website’s ID card, the two swap a secret key using an open padlock only the website can unlock, and every message after that travels scrambled.

The fine print

The IP address, nameserver, and certificate are nbaronia.com’s real ones as of September 2026. Real TLS agrees on its key with math rather than a mailed padlock, and the timings are illustrative.