A Short DNS Term Glossary

DNS Terms you should know

A Record

Official: The most basic type of DNS record used to point a domain or subdomain to an IP address.

CNAME

DNS record that maps an alias name to the true domain name.

Domain

Site address purchased from a registrar.

IP Address

Unique numeric string separated by periods that identifies each computer using the Internet Protocol to communicate over a network.

Domain Name Server, DNS, or Name Server

A computer that hosts a network service that provides responses to queries against a directory service, like what we would call a phone book. It translates word based addresses to IP addresses.

Registrar

A company or organization that manages the registration of domain names and maintains the official registration information. A domain name registrar must be accredited by a generic top-level domain (gTLD) registry and/or a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry.

DNS Propagation

The time required for DNS changes made to a DNS zone to be observed at the client. DNS entries are cached by many applications including browsers and other DNS servers. A cached DNS entry will be saved locally and reused for every request until the cached entry expires on the server. Typically 12 to 24 hours.

 

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