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Questions tagged [domain-name-system]

The Domain Name System, usually referred to by the acronym DNS, is a hierarchical, distributed database where the keys are domain names. Questions involving publicly accessible domains should include the real, Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)

DNS is the Domain Name System, a hierarchical, distributed database where the keys are domain names.

The primary references are:

  • RFC 1034 - Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities
  • RFC 1035 - Domain Names - Implementation and Specification

These documents collectively form STD 13. RFC 2181 is a frequently cited reference for STD 13 that addresses some of the more confusing areas of operation.

The most common record types found in the DNS are:

  • "A" records - the mapping from a domain name to an IPv4 address
  • "AAAA" records - the mapping from a domain name to an IPv6 address
  • "MX" records - the mapping from a domain name to the host name of an SMTP server
  • "NS" records - used to delegate a portion of the hierarchy to specific DNS servers
  • "PTR" records - typically used (via in-addr.arpa.) to map an IPv4 address back to a domain name
  • "CNAME" records - used to alias a domain name to its canonical version

DNS packets are conventionally transported over UDP and TCP port 53. UDP is more commonly used, but larger DNS responses and zone transfers require TCP. See RFC 5966.

This Wikipedia article provides an approachable introduction to DNS.

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Name Servers with Registrar vs. Host Provider

This may be a redundant questions, but is there any benefit to using name servers with a registar provider vs. a hosting provider? Some shared hosting accounts through places like 1&1 ask that you use their name servers when using an external domain…
RCNeil
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How do I redirect a domain

I have site hosted at a domain www.x.com. I have a newer version of the same site hosted at www.y.com. I would like to retire x.com, but for reasons of familiarity and pagerank, I need to keep the x.com domain for a while. What are my options in…
Jeff
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Can you have multiple writable, authoritative BIND DNS servers for the same zone, like AD-integrated DNS?

In an AD-integrated DNS system, there really isn't a concept of one "Master" DNS server; all AD-integrated zones are authoritative and updatable across all DNS servers, and send updates to each other on a regular basis. Is there a similar…
Jeremy Holovacs
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DNS security (hijacking?)

I am hosting my website on Linode and am also using their DNS/naming servers. (ns1.linode.com etc.) It occurred to me that I never have had to authenticate that the domain is mine when I added it to the domain to the DNS manager, or at any other…
Jongsma
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route53 for multiple identical domains

My main domain is example.com, but also bought example.org and example.net. I've configured my webservers at *.example.com to handle requests from the other domains and redirect them correctly to example.com, but I'd rather not re-configure all my…
Yaniv Aknin
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Amazon SES domain verification TXT DNS record

I currently am trying to get my domain verified on Amazon's SES and running int a problem that google searches are not helping me get any closer to solving. According to SES, I have to create a TXT record in my DNS for the domain I'm trying to…
Skittles
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Letting users make their own dns changes? Any software available to manage this tricky situation?

I currently waste a lot of time making dns changes for my organization. DDNS of course helps for workstations, but we still have a few thousand unique servers with still more applications needing cname records that DHCP/DDNS alone will not support,…
Jaredk
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map subdomain to another subdomain via cname

Question: I need to get DNS configured to point a subdomain from one domain (which I will generally not be controlling) to another subdomain on a different domain name. Testing this process using a simple CNAME entry keeps pointing to the primary…
Stephen
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Reduce Windows DNS Service caching on Window

I'm struggling with DNS caching issues on a Windows based LAN. I've noticed that if I change a DNS record on a domain hosted by a 3rd party nameserver, that I always seem to be the very last person to see the change happen. I can often query the…
NickG
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DNS Issue - Windows 2003 environment

Odd issue and I'm not having much luck with ole google (perhaps I'm not looking in the right direction). Hoping to get a little help with that here from some of you. On our network we have approx. 75 machines - all running XP SP3. They cover 3…
Hanny
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How to enable IPv6 glue records (AAAA) in PowerDNS

I'm running a PowerDNS 3.1 on a Debian Wheezy Beta 4 system. The zone data is accessed through a PostgreSQL database, the server answers to both IPv4 and IPv6 queries. If the DNS-Server knows the A record for one of the name servers referenced by NS…
aef
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DNS issue on Windows SBS2008 - Some external websites unavailable

Since few weeks, some websites are suddently unavailable. We are getting a 404 - The web page requested cannot be displayed. Basically, the only way to fix this is when I restart the DNS client/server on the server. The server is up to date but I…
user8740
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How does a domain beginning with www.uk get resolved?

I have seen domains such as www.uk.domain.mobi. Is there no restriction in terms of what is allowed after www? Can I call a subdomain anything I like and is there no dot-separated word limit?
codecowboy
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Local DNS server (bind) and the router DHCP

I just set up an internal http server for internal use (I set up Redmine), in a small network (30 or so PCs). I set up the http server on a virtual box ubuntu, that runs also the DNS server (bind). In the DNS lookup I added the Redmine server name…
Luca
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Route53 only for wildcard subdomain

We recently moved our web application to AWS. One thing that is still managed by our old hoster is DNS. OLD HOSTER example.com. NS example.com. A *.example.com. CNAME …
Philippe Gerber
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