DNS Lookup

What is a DNS lookup?

A DNS lookup asks the authoritative nameservers for the records published under a domain name. Those records tell clients where to send traffic and email, which certificate authorities may issue certificates, and how the domain is secured. This tool queries many record types in a single request and also parses the email authentication and reverse DNS records into a readable form. For ongoing visibility, pair it with DNS monitoring.

Record types you can query

• A and AAAA The IPv4 and IPv6 addresses a hostname resolves to.
• CNAME An alias that points one hostname at another canonical name.
• MX The mail servers that accept email for the domain, each with a priority.
• NS and SOA The authoritative nameservers and the zone serial that tracks changes.
• TXT Free-form records used for domain verification and policies such as SPF.
• CAA Which certificate authorities are allowed to issue certificates for the domain.
• SPF, DMARC, DNSSEC, and PTR Parsed views of email authentication policy, signing status, and reverse DNS for the resolved addresses.

How to read the result

• TTL The time in seconds a resolver may cache the record before asking again. Low values propagate changes faster.
• MX priority Lower numbers are preferred. Mail delivery tries the lowest priority host first and falls back to higher ones.
• Authoritative source Results read directly from the zone's own nameservers rather than a cached resolver.
• DNSSEC status Secure means the zone is signed and validated, unsigned means no DNSSEC is published, and bogus means validation failed.