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Glossary Web & HTTP

DNS

DNS (Domain Name System) is the internet's directory that translates domain names like example.com into IP addresses and holds other records about a domain.

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In more detail

A lookup passes through a recursive resolver, the root servers, the TLD servers and finally the domain's authoritative servers, and answers are cached for their TTL. DNS also stores the records that route email (MX record) and authenticate it (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).

Try these tools

DNS Record Lookup

Look up A, AAAA, MX, TXT, NS, or CNAME DNS records for any domain in real time.

DNS Propagation Checker

Check a DNS record against Google, Cloudflare, Quad9, and OpenDNS public resolvers simultaneously to see if a change has fully propagated.

Reverse DNS Lookup

Perform a reverse DNS lookup to find the hostname associated with any IPv4 or IPv6 address.

See also

  • Glossary TTL
    TTL (time to live) is how long, in seconds, a DNS record or cached item may be reused before it must be fetched again.
  • Glossary MX record
    An MX (mail exchanger) record is a DNS record that names the servers that accept email for a domain, with a priority number.
  • Glossary Domain name
    A domain name is the human-readable address of a website or service, such as example.com, which DNS translates into an IP address.
  • Guide How DNS Works
    How a name becomes an IP address through resolvers, root, TLD and authoritative servers, the record types, TTL and caching.
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