70

I'm trying to understand DNS a bit better, but I still don't get A and NS records completely.

As far as I understood, the A record tells which IP-address belongs to a (sub) domain, so far it was still clear to me. But as I understood, the NS record tells which nameserver points belongs to a (sub) domain, and that nameserver should tell which IP-address belongs to a (sub) domain. But that was already specified in the A record in the same DNS file. So can someone explain to me what the NS records and nameservers exactly do, because probably I understood something wrong.

edit: As I understand you correctly, a NS record tells you were to find the DNS server with the A record for a certain domain, and the A record tells you which ip-address belongs to a domain. But what is the use of putting an A and an NS record in the same DNS file? If there is already an A record for a certain domain, then why do you need to point to another DNS server, which would probably give you the same information?

1
  • 7
    Forgive the hubris on an old question, but I'm a DNS admin and I do not consider any of the upvoted answers to adequately explain the problem. I can relate to this question because I had the same confusion myself in my early days. I've contributed an answer of my own.
    – Andrew B
    May 30, 2016 at 19:15

7 Answers 7

73

Some examples out of the fictitious foo.com zone file

 ....... SOA record & lots more stuff .......
 foo.com.      IN        NS        ns1.bar.com.

 foo.com.      IN        A         192.168.100.1
 ....... More A/CNAME/AAAA/etc. records .......

A Record = "The host called foo.com lives at address 192.168.100.1"
NS Record = "If you want to know about hosts in the foo.com zone, ask the name server ns1.bar.com"

6
  • 11
    I love foobar references. :D
    – JohnThePro
    Jan 20, 2011 at 23:18
  • 2
    @Tiddo a big reason is that slave servers are usually notified of zone changes because they're listed as NS records. Also if you query the authoritative server for ns1.foo.com's address in the process of looking up something else and the record doesn't exist there you'll get NXDOMAIN and Bad Things will happen (but it will work for people who queried the com parent server, since presumably there would be glue A records there)
    – voretaq7
    Jan 20, 2011 at 23:26
  • 1
    @JohnThePro - my other option was example.com, and I hate example.com references :-)
    – voretaq7
    Jan 20, 2011 at 23:29
  • 3
    @voretaq7 so basically the NS records are used as a backup mechanism and to notify those nameservers when the ip-address of the domain changes?
    – Tiddo
    Jan 20, 2011 at 23:30
  • 2
    @tiddo and as a signpost as described above & in lots of the other answers. There may be other things that look at NS records that I'm forgetting about, but those are the two big ones that jump to mind.
    – voretaq7
    Jan 20, 2011 at 23:42
36

This is an old question, but I think the other answers aren't really touching on the source of the confusion. NS records at the apex follow a different set of rules than NS records beneath the apex.

From those rules, we can derive two different behaviors for what happens when an A record exists on a DNS server with the same name:

  • If the NS record does not define a referral, other data can exist alongside of it in the same zone. Since the server considers itself authoritative for both the NS record and the A record, there is no conflict. This is why other data commonly lives alongside the NS records at the apex of a zone.
  • If the NS record does define a referral, then the A record is effectively "masked" by a zone cut. This A record is not authoritative, and must not show up in the answer section of an authoritative response. It can potentially be used as glue data which shows up in the additional section of the referral, but that's it.

Confusing? Yeah, it is. Drop a note in the comments if you have trouble following this and I'll see what I can do.

7
  • 9
    What do you mean by APEX? Jun 1, 2018 at 22:01
  • 3
    @Ryan-Neal The NS records at the top of the zone file.
    – Andrew B
    Jun 3, 2018 at 4:46
  • 1
    @Andrew B - The source of confusion is still there - I read your answer again and again and understood most of the concepts but for me things get hazy when you say "A record exists on a DNS server with the same name" - same name as what - same name as delegated NS record?; I know you are referring to glue record - 2 example records i.e. NS records for each case i.e. for referral and no referral can really help. Can you enhance your answer please? Jun 2, 2020 at 18:55
  • 1
    @AbhishekPalakkalKaliyath Re: "still in an endless loop of figuring out the need for NS records", does this answer help more? If not, I'll create a chat room and we can discuss it further.
    – Andrew B
    Jun 2, 2020 at 22:39
  • 1
    @AbhishekPalakkalKaliyath Essentially, yes. The job of a recursive nameserver is to find an authoritative answer. An authoritative answer is a reply from a nameserver that has the AA (authoritative answer) flag set to 1. To reduce comment spam, I will continue in this chat.
    – Andrew B
    Jun 4, 2020 at 19:52
21

an A record maps a name to an IP address. e.g.

binary.example.com.         IN  A       192.168.1.42

states that binary.example.com. resolves to 192.168.1.42

an NS record maps a name to another nameserver, i.e. another DNS server that serves that domain. i.e. "I've no idea of the IP address of this name, but if you go ask that nameserver over there, it might know"

binary.example.com.            IN      NS      otherbox.example.com
otherbox.example.com.          IN       A      192.168.1.2

If you ask a DNS server that has the above 2 records for binary.example.com. (or www.binary.example.com. or foo.bar.binary.example.com). it'll tell you that you'll have to go ask 192.168.1.2 to translate those names (well, or the dns server could do that for you, or it could have the resolved names cached and return them to you.)

3
  • often you'll see DNS records which specifies NS and A records for the same domains. But if an NS record tells were to find the A record, then what is the use of the NS record in that same file, if the A record is already there?
    – Tiddo
    Jan 20, 2011 at 23:25
  • 2
    this was my favorite explanation among all !
    – Benjamin
    Dec 26, 2018 at 10:14
  • yes, I agree with @Benjamin - this goes to show that the so-called highest or most (and sometime most recent) upvoted answer is not necessarily the best for a concise answer.
    – nate
    Dec 27, 2020 at 16:34
12

It is important to have both NS and A record in zone if you need to delegate sub-zone to different DNS server.

E.g. we have dns server ns1.bar.com authoritative for zone bar.com. And we need to delegate foo.bar.com to ns1.foo.bar.com. So we need to create zone foo.bar.com and put there this records:

foo.bar.com.     IN NS ns1.foo.bar.com.
ns1.foo.bar.com. IN A  10.10.10.10

If we won't have A record delegation won't work. Such record pairs are called glue records.

Glue records is only way for DNS system to find the exact IP of authoritative DNS server for non-root zone. If you check any domain for NS record using dig or see traffic dump with wireshark you'll see that there's 'additional' section in answer.

;; ANSWER SECTION:
foo.bar.com.             10800   IN      NS      ns1.foo.bar.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.foo.bar.com.         7972    IN      A       10.10.10.10

when doing recursive request, e.g. www.foo.bar.com your dns client will ask for DNS authoritative for foo.bar.com zone and get answer ns1.foo.bar.com.

To go further it needs to send A request for ns1.foo.bar.com, which is served by... ns1.foo.bar.com. To break out loop, delegating DNS server should add this additional section, with A record.

Server ns1.foo.bar.com should have the same records in its zone, so it can be authoritative for foo.bar.com zone.

2
  • Was having a hard time getting my head around the chicken and egg problem until I saw your glue record explanation! Jun 21, 2016 at 6:25
  • Thanks, I think the key point is, the returned answer of an NS record has also the corresponding A record.
    – BAKE ZQ
    Sep 9, 2020 at 11:36
10

The NS records specify the servers which are providing DNS services for that domain name.

The A records point host names (such as www, ftp, mail) to one or more IP addresses.

3

NS records exist SOLELY for the purpose of defining WHICH NAMESERVERS are responsible for a particular domain.

An A record exists to "ADDRESS" a particular machine, or service.

Examples for you:

In your DNS Control Panel, you'll see some NS records, these are your NAMESERVERS, or primary machine responsible for telling the internet where stuff on your domain resides.

NS1.CP.COM NS2.CP.COM

Also inside of your DNS Panel, you'll have a domain that you own (ie. -mikesfunhouse.com) that you need to have some services, like a website on.

So what you'll do is have a Primary A record, pointing "mikesfunhouse.com" to "76.19.87.956" (obviously fake IP).

Then you'll make another record, a www record, which will redirect the subdomain "www." portion to your primary site.

In short, you use A records to convert a namespace to an IP address.

1

The nameserver record tells the Internet which DNS server holds the A records, so to look up an A record for a subdomain it's roughly the following process:

Lookup the nameservers for the domain -> Query the nameserver for the subdomain's A Record

2
  • But if the A records are already in that same file, why should you specify the NS records?
    – Tiddo
    Jan 20, 2011 at 23:16
  • 1
    It's all about what you're looking for. The NS record is like the starting point. If a server had NEVER EVER visited your domain before, it would first find the NS server respond for your domain. After it identified that server, it would query it for the A record of the domain in question.
    – JohnThePro
    Jan 20, 2011 at 23:43

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .