DNS Report

This DNS Report Generator is a comprehensive tool designed to analyze and present DNS configuration and health details for any domain. By entering a domain name, users can generate a detailed report covering critical DNS records, name server configuration, and domain security settings. This tool helps domain administrators, IT professionals, and website owners verify and diagnose DNS settings, contributing to site accessibility, and email deliverability.

How to Use the DNS Reporting Tool:

• Input: Enter the domain name you want to analyze.
• Start Analysis: Click on the "DNS Report" button to begin the DNS lookup and validation process.
• View Results: After the analysis completes, the tool will present a report that includes:
  • Glue record details.
  • List of authoritative name servers with IPs and response times.
  • SOA record information.
  • DNSSEC status.
  • A list of A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, NS, and TXT records, if present.
  • Email-related records, including SPF and DMARC details.
• Interpret Results: Review each section for issues or misconfigurations. For example:
  • Glue Records: Verify the presence of glue records for the domain's authoritative name servers, especially when the name server records are under the queried domain. Missing or incorrect glue records might indicate a DNS configuration issue.
  • Name Server Information: Make sure the correct authoritative name servers and their IP addresses are included in the domain's configuration. Misconfigured name server records may cause issues with DNS resolution.
  • Name Server Response Time: Unresponsive or slow name servers can increase overall site's access time and negatively impact users' experience.
  • SOA (Start of Authority) Record Details: Inconsistent SOA records may cause issues with DNS propagation.
  • DNSSEC Status: Determines if DNSSEC is enabled for the domain and check corresponding resource records. DNSSEC is a feature that adds a layer of security to DNS, protecting against attacks such as cache poisoning.
  • Domain Resource Records: Validate various resource records associated with the domain, including A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, NS, and TXT records.
  • Email-Related Records: Missing or misconfigured MX, SPF, or DMARC records can lead to email delivery problems.

Domain Name System

DNS (Domain Name System) is the hierarchical, distributed naming system used to resolve human-readable domain names (like "example.com") into IP addresses that computers use to locate and communicate with each other. DNS functions as a network of servers organized in a tree structure:

• Root DNS Servers - The highest level in DNS, managing top-level domains such as .com, .org, and country code domains such as .uk, .ca.
• Top-Level Domain (TLD) Servers - Handle domain delegation within specific TLDs, such as .com or .org, and direct queries to the corresponding authoritative servers.
• Authoritative Name Servers - Store actual records for a specific domain, resolving queries and returning record information.

Name Server

A generic term for a DNS server that hosts DNS records and responds to DNS queries.

Authoritative Name Server

A DNS server that holds and answers queries for specific domain records, considered the source of truth for those records. Information about the Authoritative Name Servers for a domain is stored in the domain's NS resource records.

Root DNS Servers

The highest level of DNS servers, managing top-level domains (TLD) such as .com, .net, .org, and country code domains (ccTLD) like .uk, .us.

DNS Resolver

A service that receives a user's query for a domain and navigates through DNS servers to resolve it, returning the IP address or other records.

DNS Zone

A segment of the domain namespace managed by a specific set of DNS servers, often covering a single domain and its subdomains.

Glue Record

A glue record is a combination of a server name and IP address that identifies authoritative server for a domain. It is hosted by the parent (delegating) name server. Glue records are needed to avoid circular dependencies when domain's authoritative name server are within the domain itself (for example, ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com for example.com).

Resource Record (RR)

A type of DNS data structure used to store information about domain names and their corresponding IP addresses, email servers, or other configurations. The most often used resource record types are A, AAAA, NS, MS, TXT, etc. For the complete list see IANA Resource Record (RR) Types.

A Record

Maps a domain name to an IPv4 address. For example:

www.example.com. 1800 IN A 192.0.2.1

AAAA Record

Maps a domain name to an IPv6 address. Example AAAA record:

www.example.com. 1800 IN AAAA 2001:db8:1::185

CNAME Record

An alias record that points one domain name to another. A CNAME record may look like this:

demo.example.com. 600 IN CNAME www.example.com.

NS Record

Lists the authoritative name server for a domain. For example:

example.com. 172800 IN NS ns1.example.com.

SOA (Start of Authority) Record

Contains essential information about the domain and corresponding DNS zone, such as the primary name server, contact email, zone version number, refresh, retry, and expire intervals, as well as the minimum Time to Live (TTL) value. Example SOA record:

example.com. 1800 IN SOA ns1.example.com. admin.example.com. 20241001 7200 1800 864000 1800

MX Record

Defines mail server for a domain. MX record specifies mail server name and it's preference. A record with lower value has higher preference. For example:

example.com. 1800 IN MX 10 mail-01.example.com.

example.com. 1800 IN MX 20 mail-02.example.com.

PTR Record

Maps an IP address to a domain name, often used for reverse DNS lookups. PTR records are stored within in-addr.arpa. domain for IPv4 and ip6.arpa. for IPv6. Below are examples of PTR records:

1.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. 300 IN PTR ns01.example.com.

b.1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.b.1.c.0.4.0.0.4.8.b.d.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa. 300 IN PTR ns01.example.com.

TTL (Time to Live)

The duration, in seconds, that a DNS record is considered valid and can be cached by a resolver before it needs to be refreshed. A shorter TTL results in more frequent updates, while a longer TTL reduces DNS traffic.

DNSSEC

DNS Security Extensions, adding security to DNS to protect against certain attacks.

DMARC Record

Defines configuration parameters for DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) - an email authentication protocol designed to protect against email spoofing. For example:

_dmarc.example.com. 3600 IN TXT "v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:DMARC.report@example.com"

For more detailed DMARC record analysis see our DMARC Record Lookup tool.

SPF Record

Part of email authentication, it defines which mail servers are allowed to send emails on behalf of the domain. Example SPF record:

example.com. 300 IN TXT "v=spf1 ip4:10.1.1.0/24 include:_spf.example.com -all"

For more detailed SPF record analysis see our SPF Record Lookup tool.