What is a DNS Record?

What is DNS? 

"Domain Name System" is what "DNS" stands for. It is a mechanism that gives you the ability to connect to websites by associating human-readable domain names with a unique ID of the server on which a website is kept. 

At its most basic, DNS is a list of names and numbers that go together. In this case, the numbers are IP addresses. Computers use IP addresses to talk to each other. Imagine the DNS system as the phone directory for the internet. Instead of listing names and phone numbers for individuals, it lists domain names together with the matching identifiers known as IP addresses. A user's device looks up the IP address and links them to the location where the website is physically kept when they type a domain name into it. 

How Does DNS work? 

DNS is a really simple system to understand. When you type the URL of a website into your browser, it assists you in establishing a connection between that website's domain name and its corresponding IP address. The process in question is referred to as Domain Name Resolution. 

Say you want to visit Google, so you type "google.com" into your browser. You are not connecting to a service specific to google.com. A DNS resolution indicates that google.com is located at this IP address. After that, your computer will connect to that address via a specific service port and load the Google web page. 

What does DNS Record mean?  

A DNS record is a piece of information in a database that links a URL to an IP address. DNS records are kept on DNS servers, which help people connect their websites to the rest of the internet. When the URL is typed into the browser and searched, it is sent to the DNS servers, which then send it to the right Web server. This Web server then sends the user to the website they asked for, as shown in the URL, or sends them to an email server that handles incoming mail. 

The most common record types of DNS are NS (name server), A (address), MX (mail exchange), and TXT (text record). To find out more about each record, please click the links below.  

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