What is reverse DNS used for?

Posted on by Emilia Duggan

What is reverse DNS used for?

A reverse DNS lookup is a DNS query for the domain name associated with a given IP address. This accomplishes the opposite of the more commonly used forward DNS lookup, in which the DNS system is queried to return an IP address.

How do I do a reverse DNS lookup?

There are several ways to perform reverse DNS lookup:

  1. Use the Windows command line. Perform manual rDNS lookup in Windows using the nslookup command.
  2. Use the Linux terminal. The dig command with -x flag allows you to perform manual rDNS lookup.
  3. Use rDNS lookup tools. Several tools offer rDNS lookup.

What are the two types of lookup in DNS?

There are two types of lookups: forward DNS and reverse DNS. Both resolve information related to the domain, depending on the search method. If you have a domain name or email address and need the IP address resolved, forward DNS is used to return the requested information.

Which records are kept in the reverse lookup zones?

Reverse lookup zones are used to resolve IP addresses to a hostname. For reverse lookup zones to work they use a PTR record that provides the mapping of the IP address in the zone to the hostname.

What is rDNS and Fdns?

Reverse DNS (rDNS or RDNS) is a Domain Name Service (DNS) lookup of a domain name from an IP address. A regular DNS request would resolve an IP address given a domain name; hence the name “reverse.” A special PTR-record type is used to store reverse DNS entries.

What are PTR records used for?

A PTR (or Pointer) record is a security tool. Essentially, when you receive an email, your mail server uses the PTR record that comes in with the email message to check that the mail server sending the email matches the IP address that it claims to be using. This is also known as “reverse DNS lookup.”

What is PTR record in DNS?

A DNS pointer record (PTR for short) provides the domain name associated with an IP address. A DNS PTR record is exactly the opposite of the ‘A’ record, which provides the IP address associated with a domain name. DNS PTR records are used in reverse DNS lookups.

What is a reverse PTR record?

What is reverse zone DNS?

Reverse Lookup Zones. As mentioned earlier, a reverse lookup zone is an authoritative DNS zone that is used primarily to resolve IP addresses to network resource names. This zone type can be primary, secondary, or Active Directory—integrated.