ping dns question

hi - i'm currently studying for my ccna at uni and i have a basic dns question about when i use ping from xp's command line. when i ping a website that i'm sure i've never previously visited(eg. www.miamidolphins.com - i dont follow american football just an example) the url seems to get resolved almost instantly into an ip address (it seems as soon as i hit enter) even though i'm sure its not in my dns cache - how does this happen almost instantaniously? does it not first have to go to my isp's dns server for resolving before coming back to me ?

Hi there,

You are correct, it does however the process is very fast, especially if it is cached at your ISP's DNS servers. If the request has not already been queried by your ISP DNS Servers, it will then have to go over the Internet and query the DNS hierachy in order to get the correct response. Even when this is performed its a pretty quick process.

Cheers

cheers Wayne - it just seemed that as soon as i hit enter the ip address would pop up instantly - i'm think i was just struggling to comprehend the speed in which dns was working - ta mate !