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Let's suppose we have the following DNS zone:

A record: 88.150.22.130
MX record: 88.150.22.131
SOA record: 88.150.22.132
NS record: 88.150.22.133
A record for subdomain "www" : 88.150.22.134 (the web server)
A record for subdomain "ftp" : 88.150.22.135 (the ftp server)

In this kind of situations (I've seen plenty of these in big corps), what's the role of the machine whose IP is 88.150.22.130 since we can guess it is not a DNS server, not a web server, not a mail server, not an ftp server. What's the point of pointing to a machine in the A record who doesn't seem to have any significant role in the domain.

Ryan B.
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2 Answers2

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Nowadays most people expect that the apex record example.com. IN A <w.x.y.z> is the address of a server running a web server for that domain (even if most web servers for the apex won't do more than redirecting web browsers to www.example.com).

HBruijn
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  • Yes, that's what I always thought. But there are situations (mostly in big corporations) where the web server is on a different machine (who is referenced as a subdomaine by the DNS server of the zone). In this kind of situations, it seems pointless to have a whole public IP (pointed by the A record of the domain) who actually does nothing. – Ryan B. Jun 04 '17 at 21:21
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    For many companies IPv4 addresses are not a valuable and scarce commodity at all. There are enough organizations that still have enough IPv4 addresses that they don't even need to use RFC 1918 addresses for their internal networks and instead use globally unique IPv4-addresses there as well... – HBruijn Jun 04 '17 at 21:30
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Yes the record A => XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX that doesn't have anything is usually referred as the "@" record or Domain name. and it's meant to get the web using just "domain.net". Also, there are people that use a redirection to www.domain.net or even https://www.example.org

Jose Ortega
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  • The `@` is not quite the same as the domain name, in a Bind zone file it is a shorthand for the `$ORIGIN` which in turn is the zone name by default but it can be changed, even multiple times in the course of a zone file. – HBruijn Jun 05 '17 at 06:42
  • For the purpose of the question he's asking it is. – Jose Ortega Jun 05 '17 at 14:21