It is hard to imagine modern infrastructure and networks in general without DNS. This technology allows users/services regarding domain names and records of different formats to find the right resources for their tasks.
Whether it's a mail message to a colleague's box or a site with kitties, web and mail services first found the record example.com → 192.168.1.2 and directed the network packet to the right machine. But in the course of development of services and technologies, in addition to the standard records domain → IP-address, there are many others. In this material, let's consider each of them in an express format.
What is DNS?
DNS or Domain Name System - a service that provides customers with the service of resolving or finding a match between the domain and the value that the server stores in the format of records. For one domain, several records of different types can be matched at the same time. For example, our domain vdushuu.space has 3 records in our domain control panel.
Each of the existing records has its own type/function, as well as fields to fill in. You can find the required record for a domain using the standard dig + nslookup utilities:
Let's take a look at each of the record types and describe their functionality!
What DNS records are there?
Type A record
To find the IPv4 address of the host that hosts a site, network storage or other resource by domain name use a record type A. The process of recording it looks like this:
It is necessary to specify the domain itself with the @ sign or its subdomains by writing their values in the field, and then set the corresponding address to the domain name. In this case, one address can correspond to one or more domains, but not vice versa. However, if you use your own DNS-server, the technology DualBrain or GeoIp may imply this.
AAAA records
To find the IPv6 address of a host, a AAAA type record is used by domain name. The record process looks similar to the previous one. The number of devices in the network grows hyperbolically, and the need to identify each of them remains the same, so this kind of record is already provided. If you don't have sufficient resources than you can perform actions on powerful cloud servers. Serverspace provides isolated VPS / VDS servers for common and virtualize usage.
MX type record
To find a mail server where you need to send messages, you can use MX record. This is almost identical to the A record, but exists separately to allow for flexibility in infrastructure design. For your domain, you specify the domain of the mail gateway to handle MX type requests.
Note that you also need to specify the corresponding Type A record for MX.
PTR type record
Often some services for node verification use the PTR record to find out which domain corresponds to a given IP. For its formation, the provider makes changes independently, and may not provide them.
CNAME type record
Redirection in the web exists not only at the level of web-server, html handler, core js, but also in domains has its analogue. A record of CNAME type allows, when a user calls, to redirect his request to another domain.
In this case, the mnemonic name is the one referenced, and the canonical name is the alias or synonym of the one referenced.
NS type record
To understand the work of this type of record, recall that usually the service DNS is recursive search for domain servers of different levels, searching for the responsible for the zone server. Just the type of NS record allows you to specify who will be responsible DNS for our domain or where to go for domain records.
TXT record type
This type of record is a resource field, where you can write data for domain verification for SSL registration or verification of DKIM-digital signature of mail. Also, some services require to insert authentication strings in order to confirm the rights to the domain. Therefore, it can take values of the following form:
p=(generated public key)
SRV type record
Represents a domain that is no longer just like an A record on a machine, here it refers to its specific raised service or resource. It is necessary to select the protocol, port and to which domain such a service domain record will be bound:
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