flushdns explained ?

[tautvydas]

okay so basically my steam client does not open up and just shows black screen since its "web browser" cant load sites.

 

i have tried many solutions for it but there is still one that is somewhat suggested and that is to flush my dns 

is there any site or one of you could explain how would it affect my computer and could it couse some clients like league of legends one or anything like that to crash after doing this ?

 

 

(also i have no idea where exactly to post this)

[Lurick]

When you browse to, lets say google.com, your computer will lookup the IP address of google.com and then it will store this information locally so it doesn't have to ask for the information again, it can look it up in the local cache instead. If you don't access something after a period of time it will also age out the entries so it doesn't keep storing information for every website you've ever accessed.

Flushing the cache basically removes all the entries and forces the computer to ask a DNS server for the information again. This is useful if say the IP address has changed for a website or something has become stale and stuck, pointing to the wrong location.