eli5:how does one host know the ip address of a destination ip address before sending data?

Question

eli5:how does one host know the ip address of a destination ip address before sending data?

In: 4

Answer 1

that depends.

If the data was requested by another host then the IP is obviously known (return to sender)

Then there are multiple ways to get a destination address.

DNS can give you an IP for a known host. Like when you type in google.com into your browser, the browser looks up the IP before sending the request.

The host could also have the IPs of certain hosts saved locally.