Description

Online DNS Record Viewer makes it easy to view all kinds of Domain Name System (DNS) records.
The DNS is crucial system for today's Internet. Incorrectly set up DNS records cause many different
problems to administrators of web servers and company infrastructure. Online DNS Record Viewer
can be used to check various DNS records on arbitrary DNS servers.
Online DNS Record Viewer can become handy even if you are not a server administrator. As a
common user you might want to investigate why are you unable to reach a certain web site while your
friends have no problems with it. With Online DNS Record Viewer you check the records of your
Internet service provider's (ISP) DNS server and compare it with the information from the target
domain's authoritative DNS server and you find out that your ISP's server is poorly configured or just
holds the old version of the record in its cache. You can also reveal how systems such
as opendns.com work under the hood.

Usage
Fill in the Host / IP address field with the domain name or IP address you want to query about.
Specify a name server of your choice in the DNS server field, or just leave the "Default" value there to
use one of our DNS servers. Then, in the Query type field, select the type of DNS record you are
interested in and click the "Query!" button to get your result.
If you want to receive authoritative answer rather than non-authoritative enable the Require
authoritative answer option. Online DNS Record Viewer will try to contact the authoritative name
server for the specified query and obtain the authoritative answer for you. The specified name server
will be used to find the authoritative name server. If Online DNS Record Viewer fails to obtain the
authoritative answer it will automatically try to get at least a non-authoritative answer from the
specified name server.
DNS Resource Records
Zone DNS database is a collection of resource records and each of the records provides information
about a specific object. A list of most common records is provided below:
 Address Mapping records (A)
The record A specifies IP address (IPv4) for given host. A records are used for conversion of
domain names to corresponding IP addresses.
 IP Version 6 Address records (AAAA)
The record AAAA (also quad-A record) specifies IPv6 address for given host. So it works the
same way as the A record and the difference is the type of IP address.
 Canonical Name records (CNAME)
The CNAME record specifies a domain name that has to be queried in order to resolve the
original DNS query. Therefore CNAME records are used for creating aliases of domain names.
CNAME records are truly useful when we want to alias our domain to an external domain. In
other cases we can remove CNAME records and replace them with A records and even decrease
performance overhead.
 Host Information records (HINFO)
HINFO records are used to acquire general information about a host. The record specifies type of
CPU and OS. The HINFO record data provides the possibility to use operating system specific
protocols when two hosts want to communicate. For security reasons the HINFO records are not
typically used on public servers.
Note: Standard values in RFC 1010
 Integrated Services Digital Network records (ISDN)
The ISDN resource record specifies ISDN address for a host. An ISDN address is a telephone
number that consists of a country code, a national destination code, a ISDN Subscriber number
and, optionally, a ISDN subaddress. The function of the record is only variation of the A resource
record function.
 Mail exchanger record (MX)
The MX resource record specifies a mail exchange server for a DNS domain name. The
information is used by Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to route emails to proper hosts.
Typically, there are more than one mail exchange server for a DNS domain and each of them have
set priority.
Example:
msn.com MX preference = 5, mail exchanger = mx2.hotmail.com
msn.com MX preference = 5, mail exchanger = mx3.hotmail.com
msn.com MX preference = 5, mail exchanger = mx4.hotmail.com
msn.com MX preference = 5, mail exchanger = mx1.hotmail.com

msn.com nameserver = ns3.msft.net

msn.com nameserver = ns5.msft.net
msn.com nameserver = ns4.msft.net
msn.com nameserver = ns1.msft.net
msn.com nameserver = ns2.msft.net
mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.55.92.184
mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.188.72
mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.188.94
mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.188.110
mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.54.188.126
mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.55.37.72
mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.55.37.88
mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.55.37.104
mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.55.37.120
mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.55.92.136
mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.55.92.152
mx1.hotmail.com internet address = 65.55.92.168

 Name Server records (NS)

The NS record specifies an authoritative name server for given host.
 Reverse-lookup Pointer records (PTR)
As opposed to forward DNS resolution (A and AAAA DNS records), the PTR record is used to
look up domain names based on an IP address.
 Start of Authority records (SOA)
The record specifies core information about a DNS zone, including the primary name server, the
email of the domain administrator, the domain serial number, and several timers relating to
refreshing the zone.
 Text records (TXT)
The text record can hold arbitrary non-formatted text string. Typically, the record is used
by Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to prevent fake emails to appear to be sent by you.