What is an A-Record? – #Digital Literacy

An A-Record allows the use of hostnames to locate the address of a computer. It’s a type of DNS record where  A stands for the Address. It records the information about the address connecting to a domain.  

In the DNS, It records the bridge between the hosting server and the domain. An A-Record is only applicable to ipv4-addresses. In the case of ipv6 addresses, the AAAA-Records are used. 

Why does it matter?

When you type an URL in a browser, the DNS redirects you to the website by matching the URL to the specified IP-address value using a set of DNS records. And, an important part of the process is possible due to an A-Record.

In this process, it acts as a bridge matching the URL to the IP Address.

If you wish to learn more about an IP-Address, click here to read what an IP-Address is and How it works.

How to configure an A-Record?

To know how to configure an A-Record, you’ll have to understand its format.

For instance, Google‘s IP- Address is 172.217.17.110. And, its configuration might be similar to this.

The @ here stands for the root domain and the host section can be configured with the information about the root domain and the secondary level domains as per the user requirement.

The TTL here talks about the Time to Live. The Time to Live settings refers to the time limit for the information to live on a device or a remote server.