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Background
So, I am using namecheap as my registrar for a domain I'm moving from an old webhost to a VPS server with a different host.
I initially had a lot of problems with name resolution (had a correct A record but no resolution after 3 or 4 days). After:

  • changing a CNAME that is apparently required by the registrar (wouldn't let me delete it)
  • and after deleting a few other DNS records that had been automatically added
  • as well as adding another A record for www, (and waiting)

name resolution seems to have finally worked correctly (well, kind of).

Question
My question is this:
Why does my domain (cloudwist.com) resolve to two IP addresses?
https://cachecheck.opendns.com/ responds with two IP addresses. One is the IP address of my VPS server, the other is some IP address from the registrar (if I use https://www.ultratools.com/tools/ipWhoisLookup with the IP address it gives me the registrars information).

More Details
http://www.intodns.com/cloudwist.com shows that everything is fine, so I guess I'm not worried but more curious (though still a little worried).
If I ping the base domain it resolves to the registrar IP (even though the registrar's DNS tool shows the A record that I entered, which points the base domain to my server's IP).
If I ping www.[my domain] then it returns the address of my VPS server (I do have an A record for this one so that makes sense).
There is no location in the DNS tool that shows me an A record which points my base domain to the registrar's IP. Additionally I most definitely did not ever create one as I didn't even know the IP address until I took the time to attempt to resolve the name resolutions issues.

Is this normal??

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    No, that's not normal. You should bring that up with the registrar. They seem to have some pretty non-standard things running behind the scene, and it's near impossible to guess from the outside what they are.
    – Tilman Schmidt
    Commented Sep 18, 2016 at 10:04
  • @TilmanSchmidt It felt that way to me but I'm definitely no expert, so I appreciate your perspective on it. Don't know why they won't let me delete the CNAME record either... just seems odd...
    – MER
    Commented Sep 18, 2016 at 10:34
  • I am wondering who is signing the zone. Are you doing the signing yourself? Or did the provider create a keypair on your behalf to do the signing?
    – kasperd
    Commented Sep 18, 2016 at 11:37
  • @kasperd Must have been the provider, I am not knowledgeable enough to setup a DNS server @ this point, and currently have no interest in doing it. I certainly didn't generate any keys for a DNS server. I simply utilized the DNS tools the registrar provided. (also assuming I know enough to even answer your question, which I might not). I'll follow up with the provider in a few days as suggested by TilmanSchmidt to see what they have to say about it. Thanks!
    – MER
    Commented Sep 18, 2016 at 11:53

1 Answer 1

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This is sometimes the way that what are colloquially called ALIAS records for services deployed on a "bare" domain, a registerable entity without a subdomain, are implemented. These names cannot have CNAME records due to limitations in DNS but the desire is for CNAME like functionality, particularly used in geo load balancing, where requests to resolve a DNS name return IPs that will be topologically closest to the client. The registrar IP you receive is probably running a load balancer, proxying to wherever your service is deployed.

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  • hmmm I think I can see how that could make some sense. So they have DNS servers that load balance resolving my registered name, and they are attempting to force DNS resolution by servers that are geographically distributed?? (I say force because, technically DNS should work this way anyway right?) I'd feel better about it if I could @ least see the real DNS records causing this but I suppose they are expecting people to not pay attention/notice? (which would have included me had I not had name resolution issues with the default setup they provided).
    – MER
    Commented Sep 19, 2016 at 17:24

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