An A record, which stands for "Address Record," is one of the most basic DNS records. It is used to associate a domain name with the numeric IP address of a specific server or host on the Internet. A records are often used to convert a domain name into the IP address needed to find the server you want to connect to.
Every time you use a Web browser to visit a Web site, a DNS lookup is performed behind the scenes to obtain the IP address of that Web site's server. The A record plays a crucial role in this process.
A typical A record looks like the following:
yourdomain.com. IN A 192.0.2.1- "yourdomain.com" is the domain name associated with the IP address.
- "IN" stands for Internet and indicates that this is an Internet-related DNS record.
- "A" is the record type that specifies that this is an address record.
- "192.0.2.1" is the numeric IP address of the server or host with which the domain name is associated.
A-records are often used to associate domain names with Web server IP addresses, but they can also be used for other purposes, such as assigning IP addresses to mail or FTP servers.
For example, if a website is "www.jouwdomein.com" and is hosted on a server with the IP address 192.0.2.1, the corresponding A record would be set as shown above. When someone enters the URL "www.jouwdomein.com" entry in a Web browser, the browser consults the DNS servers to retrieve the IP address associated with "www.jouwdomein.com" via the A record. Then the browser connects to the server at that IP address to retrieve and display the website data.