Jun01

Meet Matt Larson, DNS Expert posted by Karen Snyder

Filed in: , , ,

The first interview on VeriSign Live is with Matt Larson, Vice President of DNS research. I met Matt when I joined VeriSign as a Web producer in 2002. My first assignment was to re-brand the Acme Byte & Wire site (Matt’s company) as one of VeriSign’s acquisitions.  Matt was extremely cordial about the situation, he understood why his brand needed to be assimilated into the “collective.” But he seemed crestfallen when it came time to bid farewell to the jaunty green and white “Ask Mr. DNS” Logo. I was new to the world of Corporate Branding, so I felt quite awkward about what had to be done. It made for some uncomfortable moments for me on elevator rides to the fourth floor, where we both sit.

Matt explained some of the important terms and concepts around the Domain Name System, or the DNS. Matt described the DNS as a “massive distributed database” whose main purpose is to map domain names (names of computers), to IP addresses, which are the network addresses for Internet servers.

“People can remember names a lot easier than they can remember IP addresses, and the guts of the Internet routers, switches and things need IP addresses in order to route traffic, but it’s easier for people to remember Domain Names than IP addresses. So the DNS performs this critical function.”

Want to hear more from Matt? Listen to his extremely informative (and rather entertaining) podcast “Ask Mr. DNS” that he records with his friend and co-DNS expert, Cricket Liu.

(No Comments) Read More

Share Your Thoughts