| Understanding DNS Records
DNS (Domain Name System), is the service which translates between Internet domain names and Internet IP addresses.
Domain names are the names which we use to refer to computer hosts on the Internet, such as www.google.com, www.nic.ag.
IP addresses are the numbers which Internet routers use to move traffic across the Internet, such as 211.1.13.115 and 209.11.234.12.
What are DNS Records?
DNS records or Zone files are used for mapping domain names/websites to IP addresses. Located on servers called the DNS servers or nameservers, these records are typically the connection of your website with the outside world. Requests to visit your website are forwarded to your authoritative DNS servers and then get pointed to the actual computers called web servers that serve the website or to email servers that handle the email.
The types of DNS Records mostly used in all DNS configurations are listed below and are referred to as Resource Records (RRs).
A
AAAA
MX
NS
CNAME
PTR
SOA
SRV
TXT
NAPTR
Without these records, your websites, email and nameservers will not be active on the Internet and will not be accessible worldwide.
General Syntax for all DNS records:
host IN RR RR Value.
A Records
An A record is the most basice RR record and is simply an address record used to locate a particular Internet host or server.
An address record, assigns an IP address to a domain or subdomain name. When the domain name system was designed it was recommended that no two A records refer to the same IP address, however, it can be done in some circumstances.
Suppose you have registered a domain name within the .ag ccTLD, such as domain.ag, and you want to make this domain name active on the Internet.
You will contact a website hosting provider, who will provide you with valid and active IP addresses (e.g. 69.9.60.11). To make your domain name active on the Internet and to make your domain name visible worldwide, you would need to assign the IP address to your server, by creating an A record with "domain.ag" as your domain name and IP address (69.9.60.11) in the value field. Once active on the authoritative nameserver listed when you registered your domain name within the TLD, then from now on, all the requests for the website domain.ag will be sent to your physical server that has been configured with that IP address.
Example of a valid A Record with Syntax
host. IN A 69.9.60.11
where host represents the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of the host or server.
Typically, you would wish to name your host according to the services provided, with WWW being the most common host added to a domain name to indicate a website.
So, you would name your server, www.domain.ag and this would be the FQDN. Therefore, in our example, the full DNS record would be:
www.domain.ag. IN A 69.9.60.11
Notice the . after the FQDN, which signifies that this is the FULL name or an individual host within the domain name and NOT the full domain name itself. Some variations are possible, and some DNS software may already know to include the . after the FQDN, as well as the IN (which means Internet). Typically, you only have to specify the FQDN, the type of RR record and the value of the RR record.
This means that any request to access or visit the website, www.domain.ag, will be forwarded to the authoritative namesever for this domain name, which would then provide the listed IP address that will then be used to provide a route to actually get to this website.
AAAA Record
An AAAA record or IPv6 address record maps a hostname to a 128-bit IPv6 address.
The regular DNS Address resource record is defined for a 32-bit IPv4 address, so a new one was created to allow a domain name to be associated with a 128-bit IPv6 address. The four “A”s (“AAAA”) are a mnemonic to indicate that the IPv6 address is four times the size of the IPv4 address. The AAAA record is structured in very much the same way as the A record in both binary and master file formats; it is just much larger. The DNS resource record Type value for AAAA is 28.
Example of AAAA Record with Syntax
The AAAA record is to help transition and coexistence between IPv4 and IPv6 networks.An IPv4 nameserver can provide IPv6 addresses:
linux AAAA 3ffe:1900:4545:2:02d0:09ff:fef7:6d2c
MX Record
An MX record or mail exchange record maps a domain name to a list of mail exchange servers for that domain, which allows emails to work. You must have an existing server that has email software/services installed and active on the Internet, which means that you would need an A record for the mail server.
Typicall, mail servers are hosts that append "mail" to an existing domain name, such as mail.domain.ag.
So, the valid A RR record must first be created to access the mail server, with, for example, an IP address of 69.9.60.20:
mail.domain.ag. IN A 69.9.60.20
Then, you would need to set up the actual MX RR records. Note that you can have more than one email servers accepting emails for a particular domain name/website.
Example with MX Record Syntax - Single mail servers
domain.ag. 14400 IN MX 0 mail.domain.ag.
The MX record shows that all emails for domain.ag should be routed to the valid mail server at mail.domain.ag. The DNS record shows that domain.com is located at 69.9.60.20. This means that email meant for user@domain.ag will be routed to the email server at 69.9.60.20. This finishes the task of the MX record. The email server on that server then takes over, collects the email and then proceeds to distribute it to the user ``user''.
It is important that there be a dot (``.'') after the domain name in the MX record. If the dot is absent, it routes to ``mydomain.com.mydomain.com''. The number 0, indicates Preference number. Mail is always routed to the server which has the lowest Preferance number first. If there is only one mail server, it is safe to mark it 0.
Using Multiple mail servers
If you want to use multiple mail servers you have to use MX record preferences.The MX record preference values indicate which mail server to use and in which order to try them when they fail or don't respond. A larger preference number is less preferred for your main email server. Thus, a mail exchanger with a preference of zero (0) is always preferred over all other mail exchangers. Setting preference values to equal numbers makes mail servers equally preferred.
Example with MX Record Syntax - Multiple mail servers
domain.ag. 14400 IN MX 0 mail.domain.ag.
domain.ag. 14400 IN MX 30 mail.domain.com.
You can have unlimited MX entries for Fallback or backup purpose.If all the MX records are equal Preference numbers, the client simply attempts all equal Preference servers in random order, and then goes to MX record with the next highest Preference number.
NS Record
An NS record or nameserver record maps a domain name to a list of DNS servers authoritative for that domain. Delegations depend on the NS records.
The NS records of the Authoritative Name Server for any given Domain will be listed on the Parent Server. These are called as the Delegation Records as these records on the Parent Server indicates the delegation of the domain to the Authoritative servers. This is typically done at the official Registry for the TLD, when a domain name is being initially registered. NS records can be modified when new nameservers become authoritative for that domain name.
The NS record will also be listed in the Zone records of the Authoritative Name Server itself. These records are called as the Authoritative Records.
The NS records found on the Parent Server should match the NS records on the Authoritative Server as well. However, you can have NS records listed on the Authoritative server that is not listed in the Parent Server. This arrangement is normally used to configure Stealth Name Servers.
Example of NS Record With syntax
domain.ag. IN NS ns1.domain.ag.
domain.ag. IN NS ns2.domain.ag.
The above NS records indicates that the ns1.domain.ag and ns2.domain.ag hosts are the authoritative servers for the domain, domain.ag.
Of course, corresponding A records must already exist for these nameservers to be active:
e.g.
ns1.domain.ag. IN A 69.9.60.30
ns2.domain.ag. IN A 69.9.30.40
PTR Record
A PTR record or pointer record maps an IPv4 address to the canonical name for that host. Setting up a PTR record for a hostname in the in-addr.arpa domain that corresponds to an IP address implements reverse DNS lookup for that address. For example www.name.net has the IP address 122.0.3.16, but a PTR record maps 16.3.0.122.in-addr.arpa.
Example of PTR Record with syntax
16.3.0.122.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR name.net
Here as you see the IP Address is reversed and added with in-addr.arpa and this has come to the left side while the actual domain name has gone to right side of IN PTR.
This is mostly used as a security and an anti-spam measure wherein most of the webservers or the email servers do a reverse DNS lookup to check if the host is actually coming from where it claims to come from. It is always advisable to have a proper reverse DNS record (PTR) is been setup for your servers especially when you are running a mail / smtp server. You should only have one PTR record for each IP address.
CNAME Record
A CNAME record or canonical name record makes one domain name an alias of another. The aliased domain gets all the subdomains and DNS records of the original.
You should use a CNAME record whenever you want associate a new subdomain to an already existing A record; i.e. you can make "www.domain.tld" to "domain.tld", which should already have been assigned an IP with an A record.
This allows you to have as many subdomains as you wish without having to specify the IP for every record. Use a CNAME if you have more services pointing to the same IP. This way you will have to update only one record in the convenience of a change of IP address.
Example of a CNAME record:
alias.name.com IN CNAME www.name.com
where 'www.name.com' is a valid A record listing an IP address, and 'alias.name.com' is an alias that points to 'www.name.com'. This will NOT allow you to foward a domain to a specific web page. Use a webhop for that. Port numbers can be changed with webhops, as well; CNAMEs cannot change the HTTP default of 80 to any other port number.
Do not use CNAME defined hostnames in MX records. This is not recommended.
Another Example Of CNAME With syntax
mail.example.com IN CNAME mail.example.net
SOA Record
An SOA record or Start Of Authority record specifies the DNS server providing authoritative information about an Internet domain, the email of the domain administrator, the domain serial number, and several timers relating to refreshing the zone. These records are usually included at the start of the Zonefiles that contain the RR records for a particular zone or domain.
An SOA (State of Authority) Record is the most essential part of a Zone file. The SOA record is a way for the Domain Administrator to give out simple information about the domain like, how often it is updated, when it was last updated, when to check back for more info, what is the admins email address and so on. A Zone file can contain only one SOA Record. A nameserver can contain many zonefiles, each of which defines and contains RR records for the zone or domain.
A properly optimized and updated SOA record can reduce bandwidth between nameservers, increase the speed of website access and ensure the site is alive even when the primary DNS server is down.
Example of SOA Record with syntax
Here is the SOA record. Notice the starting bracket ``(``. This has to be on the same line, otherwise the record gets broken.
; name TTL class rr Nameserver email-address
mydomain.com. 14400 IN SOA ns.mynameserver.com. root.ns.mynameserver.com. (
2004123001 ; Serial number
86000 ; Refresh rate in seconds
7200 ; Update Retry in seconds
3600000 ; Expiry in seconds
600 ; minimum in seconds )
name - mydomain.com is the main name in this zone.
TTL - 14400 - TTL defines the duration in seconds that the record may be cached by client side programs. If it is set as 0, it indicates that the record should not be cached. The range is defined to be between 0 to 2147483647 (close to 68 years !) .
Class - IN - The class shows the type of record. IN equates to Internet. Other options are all historic. So as long as your DNS is on the Internet or Intranet, you must use IN.
Nameserver - ns.nameserver.com. - The nameserver is the server which holds the zone files. It can be either an external server in which case, the entire domain name must be specified followed by a dot. In case it is defined in this zone file, then it can be written as ``ns'' .
Email address - root.ns.nameserver.com. - This is the email of the domain name administrator. Now, this is really confusing, because people expect an @ to be in an email address. However in this case, email is sent to root@ns.nameserver.com, but written as root.ns.nameserver.com . And yes, remember to put the dot behind the domain name.
Serial number - 2004123001 - This is a sort of a revision numbering system to show the changes made to the DNS Zone. This number has to increment , whenever any change is made to the Zone file. The standard convention is to use the date of update YYYYMMDDnn, where nn is a revision number in case more than one updates are done in a day. So if the first update done today would be 2005301200 and second update would be 2005301201.
Refresh - 86000 - This is time(in seconds) when the slave DNS server will refresh from the master. This value represents how often a secondary will poll the primary server to see if the serial number for the zone has increased (so it knows to request a new copy of the data for the zone). It can be written as ``23h88M'' indicating 23 hours and 88 minutes. If you have a regular Internet server, you can keep it between 6 to 24 hours.
Retry - 7200 - Now assume that a slave tried to contact the master server and failed to contact it because it was down. The Retry value (time in seconds) will tell it when to get back. This value is not very important and can be a fraction of the refresh value.
Expiry - 3600000 - This is the time (in seconds) that a slave server will keep a cached zone file as valid, if it can't contact the primary server. If this value were set to say 2 weeks ( in seconds), what it means is that a slave would still be able to give out domain information from its cached zone file for 2 weeks, without anyone knowing the difference. The recommended value is between 2 to 4 weeks.
Minimum - 600 - This is the default time(in seconds) that the slave servers should cache the Zone file. This is the most important time field in the SOA Record. If your DNS information keeps changing, keep it down to a day or less. Otherwise if your DNS record doesn't change regularly, step it up between 1 to 5 days. The benefit of keeping this value high, is that your website speeds increase drastically as a result of reduced lookups. Caching servers around the globe would cache your records and this improves site performance.
SRV Record
The theory behind SRV is that given a known domain name e.g. example.com, a given service e.g. web (http) which runs on TCP in this case, a DNS query may be issued to find the host name that provides such on behalf of the domain - and which may or may not be within the domain.
Example of SRV Record with syntax
srvce.prot.name ttl class rr pri weight port target
_http._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 0 5 80 www.example.com.
srvce
Defines the symbolic service name (see IANA port-numbers) prepended with a '_' (underscore). Case insensitive. Common values are:
_http - web service
_ftp - file transfer service
_ldap - LDAP service
prot
Defines the protocol name (see IANA service-names) prepended with a '_' (underscore). Case insensitive. Common values are
_tcp - TCP protocol
_udp - UDP protocol
name
Incomprehensible description in RFC 2782. Leaving the entry blank (without a dot) will substitute the current zone root (the $ORIGIN), or you can explicitly add it as in the above _http._tcp.example.com. (with a dot).
ttl
Standard TTL parameter. For more information about TTL values.
pri
The relative Priority of this service (range 0 - 65535). Lowest is highest priority.
weight
Used when more than one service with same priority. A 16 bit unsigned integer in the range 0 - 65535. The value 0 indicates no weighting should be applied. If the weight is 1 or greater it is a relative number in which the highest is most frequently delivered i.e. given two SRV records both with Priority = 0, one with weight = 1 the other weight = 6, the one with weight 6 will have its RR delivered first 6 times out of 7 by the name server.
port
Normally the port number assigned to the symbolic service but does this is not a requirement e.g. it is permissible to define a _http service with a port number of 8100 rather than the more normal port 80.
target
The name of the host that will provide this service. Does not have to be in the same zone (domain).
TXT Record
A TXT record allows an administrator to insert arbitrary text into a DNS record. For example, this record is used to implement the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) specification.
Example of TXT Record with syntax
SPF domains have to publish at least two directives: a version identifier and a default mechanism.
mydomain.com. TXT "v=spf1 -all"
This is the simplest possible SPF record: it means your domain mydomain.com never sends mail.
It makes sense to do this when a domain is only used for web services and doesn't do email.
MX servers send mail, designate them.
mydomain.com. TXT "v=spf1 mx -all"
Let's pretend mydomain.com has two MX servers, mx01 and mx02. They would both be allowed to send mail from mydomain.com.
other machines in the domain also send mail, designate them.
mydomain.com. TXT "v=spf1 mx ptr -all"
This designates all the hosts whose PTR hostname match mydomain.com.
any other machines not in the domain also send mail from that domain, designate them.
mydomain.com. TXT "v=spf1 a:mydomain.com mx ptr -all"
mydomain.com's IP address doesn't show up in its list of MX servers. So we add an "a" mechanism to the directive set to match it.
mydomain.com. TXT "v=spf1 a mx ptr -all"
This is shorthand for the same thing.
Each of your mail servers should have an SPF record also.When your mail servers create a bounce message, they will send it using a blank envelope sender: <>. When an SPF MTA sees a blank envelope sender, it will perform the lookup using the HELO domain name instead. These records take care of that scenario.
amx.mail.net. TXT "v=spf1 a -all"
mx.mail.net. TXT "v=spf1 a -all"
NAPTR Record
NAPTR records (NAPTR stands for "Naming Authority Pointer") are a newer type of DNS record that support regular expression based rewriting.
Example of NAPTR Record with syntax
$ORIGIN 3.8.0.0.6.9.2.3.6.1.4.4.e164.arpa.
NAPTR 10 100 "u" "E2U+sip" "!^.*$!sip:info@example.com!" .
NAPTR 10 101 "u" "E2U+h323" "!^.*$!h323:info@example.com!" .
NAPTR 10 102 "u" "E2U+msg" "!^.*$!mailto:info@example.com!" .
This record set maps the phone number +441632960083 onto three possible identically ordered URIs, with a preference for SIP, then H323, and finally email. In each case, the regular expression matches the full AUS (^.$), and replaces it with a URI (e.g., sip:info@example.com). As this is a terminal record, this URI is returned to the client.Though most NAPTR records replace the full AUS, it is possible for the regular expression to back-reference part of the AUS, to grab an extension number, say:
$ORIGIN 0.6.9.2.3.6.1.4.4.e164.arpa. *
NAPTR 10 100 "u" "E2U+sip""!^+441632960(.*)$!sip:\1@example.com!" .
Once the client has the URI it must be resolved using DNS, but this is no longer part of the DDDS algorithm..
wildcard DNS record
A wildcard DNS record is a record in a DNS zone file that will match all requests for non-existent domain names, i.e. domain names for which there are no records at all.
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