Domain Name Servers

DNS Hierarchy

See here for a very good overview of the different types of DNS servers. Due to the hierarchy outlined there, you can’t just redirect google.com to your own IP address, since your DNS server is not the authority on google.com.

DNS Records

  • A record: Points a domain name (host) to an IP address (value).
  • CNAME record: Points a domain name (host) to another domain name (value).

Note that for a DNS for a specific domain name, using @ indicates that this record is for the domain name withot a subdomain. If some other string is used, then that string is used as the subdomain for that DNS entry.

Links to this page
  • Webhosting

    To avoid people having to connect to your website using an IP address, you can use a domain name server to redirect an address you own to the IP address. See Domain Name Servers for more.

  • Proxies

    A reverse proxy in a web server can allow for different domain names to be sent to different webpages, even though the HTTP GET request was to the same url. See Domain Name Servers for more.