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Visakh Vijayan
Visakh Vijayan

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DNS Records

So what is DNS. We have all heard DNS lookup failed and all sorts of stuff every now and then. What is it all about.

A DNS or Domain Name Service is a special kind of service which maps an IP to an address. Let's understand it deeper.

Suppose you type in www.gooogle.com. Now the request has to be sent from your computer to the google servers to get the google page. Right?

Yes. But how does your computer know where google is? This is where the DNS comes in.

Every server or device which is connected to the Internet will have an IP address. That is how we identify where they are.

It's similar to finding a person. If someone tells you to find Jack you will be confused as to where on Earth Jack lives, but if someone tells you Jack of Mumbai, India you have a better clarity.

So what happens in a DNS server.

Your computer takes that request and goes to the nearest DNS server. A DNS server is globally distributed so anyone from anywhere can access one of them at all times.

The DNS server will have the corresponding IP for your address. This method of obtaining information from the DNS server is called a query.

Once that is obtained you are free to go to Google servers since you now have the exact IP address.

DNS has different records, namely

  1. A or AAAA
  2. CNAME
  3. SOA
  4. MX
  5. SRV
  6. Name server
  7. PTR.

I shall update the details regarding these shortly!.

Top comments (1)

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dpaine20 profile image
David Paine20

Here is a tool, I would like to recommend to check the DNS records including A or AAAA, CNAME, MX, NS, PTR, SRV, SOA, TXT, and CAA.
Just enter any valid URL and select the DNS record type, or select the "any" to fetch all DNS records.
That tool is
dnschecker.org/all-dns-records-of-...