Human-readable addresses that map to IP addresses through the Domain Name System (DNS). In cloud architecture, domain management is a core networking concern — cloud providers offer managed DNS services that route traffic, enable failover, support weighted routing, and integrate with CDNs and load balancers. Key services: AWS Route 53, Azure DNS, Google Cloud DNS, OCI DNS.
A SaaS company registers api.myapp.com using AWS Route 53. They configure latency-based routing to direct US users to us-east-1, EU users to eu-west-1, and APAC users to ap-southeast-1 — automatically routing each user to the fastest available region without any application changes.
These are managed DNS services from major cloud providers. They host DNS zones, answer DNS queries, and let teams manage records such as A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, and NS. Amazon Route 53 also includes domain registration and advanced routing policies such as latency-based, weighted, geolocation, and health-check-based failover. Azure DNS, Cloud DNS, and OCI DNS focus on authoritative DNS hosting and integrate with their providers' networking and load balancing services.