DNS records

Types of DNS records

On a previous post I said that there are some more information's rather than domain name and IP address in a DNS server. There are many records in a DNS server. Records are of 5 types, A, CNAME, NS, MX and PTR.

A              : Map host name to an IP address

eg. xyz.com.     A  123.23.12.3

CNAME  : This record points other domain to a host name which is in A record.

eg. ftp.xyz.com.         A  xyz.com

NS             : This record specifies the authoritative name server for the domain.

eg. xyz.com             NS       ns1.abc.com.

MX             : Specifies the mail server.

PTR            : This record is used for reverse DNS lookup.

You can refer this link to get more :) 

Some usefull online tools for viewing DNS records

1. dnsrecordviewer
2. MXtoolbox
3. whois
4. viewdns
5. ultratools
6. dnsstuff
7. ping
8. dnswatch
9. dns-record-viewer