The domain namespace and resource records

The DNS architecture is designed as a hierarchical, distributed database that uses mechanisms for querying and updating the database, including replicating the database among other servers hosting the DNS server role.

The DNS database consists of records or information about the hosts and resources in a domain, and information about a domain structure. For example, clients rely on the information from the DNS server database in order to obtain an IP address that is associated to a DNS name.

The following table shows the details of the most common resource records: