DNS Basics

DNS Basics

The address given to a domain name to direct it to the server hosting your email addresses or website is known as DNS (Domain Name System). The term "the phonebook of the internet" is frequently used to DNS. Human-friendly host names are converted to IP addresses using DNS. The IP address 93.184.216.34, for instance, is translated to the domain name example.com. You may set this up by pointing a single A-record or by utilizing your host's whole nameserver configuration. In this guide, we'll go over both.

Name Servers (NS Records)

The most popular records are Nameservers, which allocate all web and email traffic for a domain to the designated server by assigning an entire DNS zone to an authoritative server. Typically, there are two records in this type of record, which look like this:

NS1.ZERONOON.COM

NS2.ZERONOON.COM

Make sure to check your customer portal or welcome email for the precise nameservers associated with your account.

A Record

A name is connected to a particular IP address by an A Record (Address Record). In order to direct zeronoon.com to IP address 205.209.104.34, the following would be the format of the A Record entry:


Record Type

A

Host

zeronoon.com.

Value

205.209.104.34



All website traffic from zeronoon.com will be routed through this to the hosting account that is linked to IP address 205.209.104.34. Since each website is linked to a different domain, many websites may share an IP address.


MX Record

Email delivery agents can learn which mail servers accept inbound mail for your domain by looking up MX Records (Mail Exchange Records). Typically, a number of records are arranged in priority order. It will have a look like this:


Priority

1

5

10

Host

@

@

@

Destination

mail1.example.com

mail2.example.com

mail3.example.com



It will take around 4-6 hours for propagation to start once the settings are saved, at which point email delivery to the new location will start.


CNAME

One name can be used as an alias for another using a CNAME Record (Canonical Name). If example.com and www.example.com point to the same server, it is a nice illustration of this in action. This would be accomplished by first configuring a CNAME record for www.example.com to refer to example.com, and then putting up an A record for example.com to the server IP address.

A couple of examples are below, using both domains and subdomains.

 

Alias

www.example.com

billing.example.com

Record Type

CNAME

CNAME

Domain

example.com

portal.example.com

 

We are configuring billing.example.com to load the same content as portal.example.com on the second record.

PTR Record

Reverse DNS records called PTR records, or pointer records, are used to provide an identity validation for an IP address. This can be useful for situations like spoofing, which is when someone tries to send an email appearing to be from you but is actually not. Creating this information also enables mail services to distinguish between spam and requested emails.

The PTR record will usually look like the example below.  Just an IP address and a domain name, similar to an A Record.

 

Record Type

PTR

Name

172.67.135.201

Domain

example.com

 

TXT Record

Common uses for a TXT Record (Text Record) include Google Domain Validation. You can input a string of information to be shown on a DNS lookup. This is how services like Google confirm that you are the domain owner.

Here's an example of what a Google verification TXT record might look like:

 

Record Type

TXT

 

Value

google-site-verification= rXOxyZounnZasA8Z7oaD3c14JdjS9aKSWvsR1EbUSIQ

 

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