When you make DNS changes for your domain, you’re editing a DNS record

Туре: A
Name (subdomain): paw
Use @ for root IPv4 address: 1.2.3.4
TTL: 1 min

Here’s what the same record looks like with dig
(we’ll explain dig on page 18)

$ dig +noall +answer paw.examplecat.com 
paw.examplecat.com. 60 IN A 1.2.3.4

DNS records have 5 parts

• name (eg tail.examplecat.com)
• type (eg CNAME)
• value (eg tail.jvns.ca)
• TTL (eg 60)
• class (eg IN)

different record types have different kinds of values: A records have an IP address, and CNAME records have a domain name.

name

paw.examplecat.com

When you create a record, you’ll usually write just the subdomain (like paw).

When you query for a record, you’ll get the whole domain name (like paw.examplecat.com).

TTL

60
“time to live”. How long to cache the record for, in seconds.

class

IN
“IN” stands for “INternet”. You can ignore it, it’s always the same.

record type

A
“A” stands for “IPv4 Address”.

value

1.2.3.4
the IP address we asked for!