Correct DNS configuration to use Route 53 for existing domain

Question

we are trying to make our heroku app available under example.com (changed here). I followed the heroku guide for using Route 53 for that (https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/route-53).

However, I think already in the DNS configuration of the zone file at our current provider is a problem:

$TTL 900
@   IN SOA ns-1478.awsdns-56.org. postmaster.robot.first-ns.de. (
    2014052101   ; serial
    900          ; refresh
    1800         ; retry
    604800       ; expire
    86400 )      ; minimum

@                        IN NS      ns-1478.awsdns-56.org.
@                        IN NS      ns-620.awsdns-13.net.
@                        IN NS      ns-1761.awsdns-28.co.uk.
@                        IN NS      ns-261.awsdns-32.com.

When I ping:

cannot resolve `example.com`: Unknown host

I can neither access the page in browser.

Is there maybe anything to change on the zonefile?

Answer 1

Of course there is a problem : you don't have A entry on your zone or a host with a A record. You just have NS records.

@  IN A 1.2.3.4
www IN A 1.2.3.4

Answer 2

My guess is that you haven't waited long enough for DNS propagation. You can check this via What's My DNS's Global DNS Propagation Checker at https://www.whatsmydns.net/.

Also, you may want to check what DNS records you're getting back for example.com. To do this, you could use a command line utility called nslookup.exe from a Command Prompt (assuming you're using Microsoft Windows).

You may also want to try clearing your DNS cache (ipconfig.exe /flushdns), incase your PC has cached an old record for this domain.

Answer 3

As far as I can understand, Route53 needs to be authoritative for the zone example.com, and to that zone you need to add a cname record for www. You speak of your "current provider", is this different than Route53?

As per the guide you linked, Route53 doesn't support CNAMEs for the root, so you can't use a CNAME for @. As per the guide however you can use a static S3 website to do a 301 redirect from example.com to www.example.com, and add a A record for @ to point to this static website.