DNS is the internet’s phone book. When you type in a website name, the computer has to figure out what the IP address of that site is. This is where DNS comes in. It’s basically a lookup service that lets you look up IP addresses and vice versa. To do this, DNS servers maintain records of domains and their associated IP addresses. One such record is called an MX record, which tells other machines on the internet which machine should handle email for your domain name (e.g., mail1 or mail2). Let’s see how it works!
What is DNS?
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a distributed, hierarchical system that translates domain names into IP addresses.
The DNS is used to resolve domain names to IP addresses and vice versa, it is also used to resolve hostnames and subdomains.
How does the DNS MX record work?
MX is short for Mail Exchange record. It tells an email server which mail servers to contact when delivering messages to a domain, and in which order to do so.
MX records are important because they’re used by all mail servers—and most other servers that send or receive email—to route outbound messages. Without MX records, you would have no way of knowing where your messages should go.
For example, if you were sending an email from [email protected] to [email protected], how would anyone know how to get the message there? Your computer could try sending it directly to [email protected], but that’s not going to work very well because your ISP won’t be able to route the message there directly. Because no one knows where [email protected] lives on the internet (or even knows if it exists at all), we need some way for people on both ends of this exchange—you and your friend—to find out where each other are located so that they can communicate properly through email
What’s the difference between an A record and a CNAME?
If you’re a DNS expert, this might be old news to you. But for those who aren’t, here’s the difference:
An A record points to an IP address. It’s used for servers and other infrastructure that need to be known by name and address (i.e., your website).
A CNAME points to a hostname and is used for subdomains, like www or blog in your domain name example above.
What’s a time-to-live (TTL)?
If you’re curious about how DNS works, you might be wondering what a time-to-live (TTL) is.
A TTL is a value that is set in the DNS record. It specifies how long the record can be cached before it expires. The TTL is expressed in seconds, minutes, hours, days or weeks. For example: A record may have a TTL of 3600 seconds (1 hour). This means that once an authoritative DNS server receives this information from its source then it must discard this record after 1 hour and request fresh data from the source if available at all times to keep its records up to date.
What are the different types of DNS records?
It’s a common misconception that the MX record is the only DNS record. In reality, there are many other types of records you can use to control how your domain name appears and functions in the public space. Some examples include A, CNAME, TXT and SPF records.
How MX Records Work?
MX stands for Mail eXchanger. It’s a type of DNS record that specifies which server is responsible for accepting email messages on behalf of the domain name associated with it. In other words, MX records are used by mail servers to route incoming email messages to the correct location.
For example, whenever you send an email message to someone and want it delivered successfully, you’re actually sending your message to their mail server’s IP address (you know that an IP address is like your home address). Now our mail server looks up their MX record in its own database and finds out where they want their emails sent – usually this will be a different port number than what we typically use when we access web pages with our browser – so then our mail server sends the email there instead.
How to List my Spam Filter Servers in DNS MX Record?
You can list multiple servers in a single MX record. In this case, if the first server does not respond to queries, then the next server will be used. This way you can have multiple backup mail servers in your DNS records.
Conclusion
This post was created to help you understand how DNS MX lookup works and what it is used for. We’ve covered the basics of DNS records, including A records and CNAMEs, as well as some more complicated ones like MX records. You also learned about TTLs and how they can be used to optimize your website’s performance. I hope this has given you a better understanding of what goes into making sure that when someone types in your website’s name or IP address into their browser (like “www.”), then get redirected to another resource on another server that answers the request by sending back content like HTML files or images back down over HTTP protocol so people can see text or pictures displayed on screen while browsing websites online!