The DNS A record points to the IP address for a given domain name.
What is a DNS A record? The “A” stands for “address,” and this is the most fundamental type of DNS record: it indicates the IP address of a given domain. For example, if you pull the DNS records of cloudflare.com, the A record currently returns an IP address of: 104.17.210.9.
A records only hold IPv4 addresses. A website with an IPv6 address
Record Type: Value: TTL @ A 192.0.2.1 14400 The “@” symbol in this example indicates that this is a record for the root domain, and the “14400” value is the TTL (time to live), listed in seconds. The default TTL for A records is 14,400 seconds. If an A record gets updated, it takes 240 minutes (14,400 seconds) to take effect. Most websites only have one A record, but it is possible to have several. Some higher-profile websites will have several different A records as part of a round-robin load balancing technique, which can distribute request traffic to one of several IP addresses, each hosting identical content. When are DNS A records used? The most common usage of A records is IP address lookups: matching a domain name (like “cloudflare.com”) to an IPv4 address. This enables a user’s device to connect with and load a website without the user memorizing and typing in the actual IP address. The user’s web browser automatically carries this out by sending a query to a DNS resolver. DNS A records are also used for operating a Domain Name System-based Blackhole List (DNSBL). DNSBLs can help mail servers identify and block email messages from known spammer domains. If you want to learn more about DNS A records, you can see the original 1987 RFC, where A records and several other DNS record types are
defined here. To learn more about how the Domain Name System works, see What is DNS?
