Purpose of a DNS server?

I have been looking at pictures of peoples home networks and a couple of them showed servers with the name DNS server on front. What is a DNS server? and what is it used for? I got an extra rack mount server here and I was wondering if i need a DNS server if not then i just want to look cool and have one any way heh

It provides an address name translation changing something from www.aninternetaddress.net to 211.222.233.1 Sometimes your ISP can be so overloaded your network requests through their DNS servers are somewhat held up, A local DNS if properly set up can help this along with bypassing theirs to get you onto the internet a whole lot faster.

some info here on this

ok here is what a dns server does. Ok you got comcast.net the website thats my ISP's website right.

The websites actual address is 63.240.76.72 I found this out by pinging this. If you put 63.240.76.72 into my web browser it will take me to the exact same site as comcast.net does. But see when the interenet was first starting out people went we don't want to have to remember 216.239.37.99 we just want to remember google.com cause it's easier. So basically this is where a DNS server comes in.

It's kinda like the an e-mail address book, lets say you want to send an e-mail to your friend bob it automatically looks up the address and sends it to him. The dns server does the same thing when you type in google.com your browser goes to the dns server and looks up the address (ip) and then sends you there making your life a lot easier.

Oh ok. So how do i set one up. Also once i set it up i wouldnt need to use no-ip.com anymore? And let say people want to join my counter-strike server. Once i set up a DNS server they can just type in the domain name of my network which translates into my WAN ip right?

anyone?

You are misunderstanding something here. You can't really setup a dns server that everyone else would use, rather if you wanted some domain (to replace no-ip.org) you need it on a "bigger" dns server.

The point of dns servers is for us not to have to remember ip-addresses. People remember names alot easier... So basicly if you buy a domain like kevincat.com from somebody, they will make sure it is entered into dns for you (once you tell them your ip).

^^
I knew that