The DNS Zone For Beginners

For all intents and purposes, DNS is similar to the internet’s phonebook. At least, that’s how it’s usually explained metaphorically. Your domain’s DNS zone, on the other hand, is more like a saved contacts list on your cell phone than an old yellow page. You enter a phone number and a name to go with it, save it, and then promptly forget about the phone number because you’ll only ever need to search by name. Right?

In the case of a DNS zone, the name would be a domain name, subdomain, or service (such as email or FTP), and the phone number would be an IP address. However, the concept remains the same; as long as you enter the correct information, a DNS zone is very much a set and forget situation. Let’s dive in and learn more about it…

The DNS Zone

The Domain Name System zone, which is often feared and misunderstood, is simply a way for you to direct visitors to the correct page or service under your domain. You’ll be able to manage your own DNS zone like a total pro with just a basic understanding of a few things.

Explaining how the internet works are slightly beyond the scope of this blog post, so let’s start with nameservers for now. If you’ve ever registered a domain and had to point it to your hosting server, you’ve used nameservers. Nameservers exist solely to direct internet traffic to your actual website whenever someone types your domain into their web browser (or otherwise clicks on a link to your website).

Nameservers look exactly like a regular URL (in fact, they basically are simply a domain name created via A RECORD, which we’ll get to momentarily), and you would provide them at the domain registrar level in order for any request for your domain to be routed from the internet at large to your hosting server, which is where your actual domain’s DNS zone will take over. For example, here are the nameservers for Harmonweb

What those nameservers do is route any traffic under the cPanel.net domain to the point where the DNS zone for that domain takes over, depending on whether the visitor wants to view the main website, https://client.harmonweb.com, or even https://harmonweb.com/blog. Each subdomain will have its own DNS zone entry to properly direct traffic. But how exactly? The answer is found in the DNS zone entries.

DNS Entries

There exists four basic types of DNS entries that we will discuss here:

• A RECORD – Consider the letter “A” as in “IP Address,” because an A RECORD directs a domain or subdomain to an IP address. This will usually be the point of entry to your website, as your domain will be translated from the domain to IP address on the hosting server here. If you prefer, you can also use A Records to direct traffic for specific subdomains to entirely different servers.
• CNAME – The “C” stands for “canonical,” and what a CNAME does is point one domain or subdomain to another. For example, if you wanted to create a subdomain called “google” and direct it to google.com, you would point the subdomain “google” to the domain “google.com” using a CNAME entry in your DNS zone, and anyone who entered google.yourdomain.com into their browser would be automatically directed to Google’s website. Of course, there are many more practical applications for a CNAME entry, but that is exactly how they work.
• MX – This is the “Mail eXchange,” and it exists solely to direct email; in essence, these entries are the internet’s mailmen.
• TXT – This is simply plain text that can be entered into the DNS zone and is commonly used to prove domain ownership. This can be required for a variety of reasons, but most commonly to demonstrate to a third party (such as Google Analytics) that you own a specific domain. They provide you with the text to enter into your DNS zone, you create the TXT entry, and then they scan your DNS zone to verify your ownership.

Using the DNS entries listed above, nearly all internet traffic is routed correctly, resulting in the correct websites loading in your browser. Much of this exists to translate data between human-readable (domain name) and computer-readable (IP address) formats. When you select the name, it stores your contact names for you while keeping your contact phone numbers for its own use, just like your cell phone.

Additional DNS Entries

There are other DNS entries that can potentially exist. For example:

• NS – These are nameserver records, and they function similarly to A Records in that they point to an IP address.
• SPF – There is a Sender Policy Framework entry to help prevent email spoofing. These are essentially just a subset of TXT entries.

Although the best way to learn how to manage DNS is to do it, the information provided above will familiarize you with the various types of records that you will commonly encounter. When in doubt, or just to be safe, you should consult your host or provider before making any changes, as incorrect entries can cause your website to go down.