[TriLUG] Home DNS

[David Burton]

On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 10:06 PM, fumiko <fumiko at trilug.org> wrote:

> On 6/22/2011 5:20 PM, Magnus wrote:
>
>> On Jun 22, 2011, at 1:47 PM, fumiko wrote:
>>
>>> OK, so I can use my existing dynamic DNS address (or may need to move to
>>> ZoneEdit) and point my GoDaddy A Record to the domain name I get from DynDNS
>>> or ZoneEdit while my MX Record points to Gmail?
>>>
>> No A record.
>>
>> Use a CNAME record.
>>
>> Keep pointing your MX at Google.
>>
>> -M
>>
> If that's the case, to where do I point the A record?  I mean, say i have
> this IP Address from TWC, 174.x.  I have a GoDaddy DNS Manager.  Currently,
> GoDaddy points to the DNS servers of my hosting company.  I need to point
> the MX at Google.  You're saying I should point the CNAME record at
> ZoneEdit, right?  If I do that, where does the A Record point?
>

No, the registrar's entry for your domain points to Domain Name Servers
(a/k/a DNSs or "nameservers"), somewhere.

(I'm recommending that you use ZoneEdit for your DNSs, but most folks use
the DNS provided by their hosting company.)

The DNS contains entries like "A Records" and "MX Records."

If you have two domain names, and you want the 2nd one to be equivalent to
the first, then instead of duplicating everything, you can just use a CNAME
record for the 2nd one, which "aliases" it to the 1st.  That's commonly
used, for example, if your main domain is myorganization.org, but you also
bought the myorganization.com domain because you know that many people get
'em mixed up.  So you use a CNAME record for myorganization.com.