Being knowledgeable on how to check specific DNS records or network connectivity can be very helpful in troubleshooting problems with DNS and Internet Networks. Knowing what IP addresses are being used and which DNS records are showing, can be very helpful, especially when propagation for DNS records can take 24 hours and 48 hours for Nameservers to show.
Some scenarios:
-
Email is not working...
- Are the correct MX records in place?
-
Not sure where a website is hosted...
- Where are the A records pointing to?
-
Not sure if A records are working...
- Do the IP address respond to a Ping?
-
Who owns a website or IP address...
- What does the WhoIs information show?
-
Is my internet working...
- What results do you get from a Traceroute/tracert?
You can use helpful tools like Name.com's WhoIs Lookup (which also includes other helpful DNS records) or Name.com's What's My IP Address?.
Also, be mindful that your browser or local internet connection might cache old website files or DNS records. So a bit of patience can go a long way.
For the more advanced users, you might use commands in special utility software on their computers to find this information much faster. Below are some of the commands that Name.com's Support Agents use every day to check Network and DNS connectivity and we hope you can learn how to use these tools too.
Windows Network Command Line Tools
ping
- A popular way to troubleshoot IP addresses of DNS records
- Tests reachability
- Determines round-trip time
- See more information on Microsoft's support at docs.microsoft.com.
tracert
- A command-line utility that you can use to trace the path that an Internet Protocol (IP) packet takes to its destination and maps the entire path.
- See more information on Microsoft's support at support.microsoft.com.
whois
- Whois performs the registration record for the domain name or IP address that you specify.
- See more information on Microsoft's support at docs.microsoft.com.
nslookup
- Lookup information from DNS servers.
- Canonical names, IP addresses etc.
- Lookup names and IP addresses
Terminal or Network Utility on Mac
See information about Terminal on Apple's support apple.com.
whois
- The Internet domain name and network number directory service.
ping
- Sends a request to network hosts (IP addresses) to elicit a response from a host or gateway.
dig
- A flexible tool for interrogating DNS name servers. It performs DNS lookups and displays the answers that are returned from the server that was queried.
traceroute
- Prints the route packets take to network hosts.
