How a Simple Redirect Turned Into a Deep DNS & HTTP Lesson

Last week, I had what should’ve been a tiny housekeeping task: redirect brewinstall[.]adyamansingh[.]xyz to brewinstall[.]adyamansingh[.]dev. A thirty-second chore. A small click. A small win. Or so I thought.

But like most corners of the internet’s machinery, that “little redirect” peeled open a surprisingly elegant world beneath it. It felt like one of those “Oh… this goes deeper than I expected” moments. (Yes, Michael Scott would be proud.)

By the time I was done, I had revisited DNS, proxies, caching rules, and how browsers negotiate with servers in the span of milliseconds.

What’s Actually Happening When You Type a URL

A browser doesn’t know where any domain lives. It starts out clueless.

So it calls the Domain Name System — the internet’s overachieving assistant manager Dwight Schrute — to map name → IP.

Two records generally run the show:

A Record Directly maps a domain to an IPv4 address.
CNAME Record Maps a domain to another domain, creating a chain until an A record is found.

This lookup is just navigation — DNS doesn’t perform redirects. Its job is simply: “Here’s where the server lives.”

Once the IP is known, the browser moves to the next stage.

The Redirect: A Tiny Packet With a Bossy Attitude

When the request hits your DNS provider or proxy (Namecheap for me, Cloudflare for many), they can choose to intercept the traffic before it reaches any backend server.

If you’ve configured a redirect rule, the proxy returns a beautifully compact HTTP response:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://brewinstall.adyamansingh.dev

That one Location header is a baton pass. A quick handoff. A tiny map pointing the browser to a new home.

The browser reads it and immediately pivots. No debate. No hesitation. Just a clean jump to the new URL.

What a 301 Triggered Behind the Curtain

A permanent redirect isn’t just a polite suggestion — it reshapes behavior:

Browsers cache it aggressively. Once a 301 is learned, future requests often skip DNS entirely.
Search engines follow the trail. Whatever SEO weight the old domain had slowly transfers to the new one.
Clients adapt. Every tool — curl, Python scripts, even IoT devices — automatically respects the new location on the next request.

It’s the internet’s equivalent of forwarding your mail when you move homes. Everything just follows.

Features (2025 Edition)

Not a traditional “features” section, but here are the moving parts I ended up exploring:

DNS resolution flow Recursive resolvers, root → TLD → authoritative servers.
Proxy-level redirect handling Why Cloudflare and Namecheap can return a redirect without touching your origin.
HTTP status semantics 301 vs 302 vs 307, and why 301 should only be used when you're absolutely sure.
Browser caching layers How Chrome, Firefox, and Safari persist 301s differently.
Redirect chains Why daisy-chaining domains is a bad idea (latency stacks quickly).

Lessons Learnt

This wasn’t just a redirect. It turned into a refreshing reminder of how the web’s plumbing works.

DNS is not a redirect mechanism — it’s a pointer map.
Proxies often become the real decision makers for rules like rewrites and redirects.
HTTP’s simplicity is deceptive — a single header can rewrite user flow, caching behavior, and search visibility.
A redirect is a design choice, not a quick fix.

And yes, I finally understood why developers dread “stale 301 cache” — browsers really do cling to them like a koala on eucalyptus.

Sometimes the most unexpected learning comes from tiny tasks done on caffeine and curiosity. This one was exactly that — a redirect that turned into a miniature tour of the internet’s nervous system.

If you’ve had similar nerdy detours, tell me. I love hearing those stories.