-1

I have always wondered this. You park your domain at a webhost and add webhost's nameserver to registrar. After that, the domain points to your website at webhost server.

Why don't I need to add an A record that points to webhost IP or add an A record for www subdomain that points to webhost IP? I just add nameserver and it works.

I thought that to point to webhost I would always need to create an A record with webhost IP and add webhost nameserver at DNS management website. How do they work?

UPDATE
Thanks for your reply. What I want to do is using my subdomain name at other webhost. For example using blog.myname.com at other webhost lets say hostgator.com while myname.com is hosted at dreamhost vps. As you know I could do this by adding A record in my bind DNS zone at my vps. I want to add only hostgator nameserver to my DNS zone to propagate my subdomain to hostgator.

sg552
  • 389
  • 3
  • 4
  • 11
  • 3
    You might like this question. http://serverfault.com/questions/355887/why-does-dns-work-the-way-it-does – Nic Feb 04 '12 at 05:18
  • You completely changed your question. Let's create a new question. – jcisio Feb 05 '12 at 09:30
  • You are correct. I already create a new question and it has been solved. `http://serverfault.com/questions/356848/how-are-a-record-for-webhost-website-is-found-from-nameserver` Thanks everyone :) – sg552 Feb 05 '12 at 18:50

3 Answers3

1

The registrar does not point it, but the webhosting company of which you use the name server, point the domain to an IP address. They know where they host your website, and they point it automatically. If you don't want to use their name server, you will have to point the domain manually (and it becomes complicated, as you'll need to know the IP address of the web server).

jcisio
  • 588
  • 1
  • 9
  • 22
  • In other words, you don't have to do it because your webhost does it for you. Since they're hosting both the web side and the domain's DNS, they automate moving the information about the web hosting to the DNS. – David Schwartz Feb 04 '12 at 06:33
1

Your webhost is maintaining A records for you, probably somewhat automatically. If instead you had the registrar point the domain at nameservers under your own direct control (rather than your webhost's nameservers), then you would indeed need to create A records on your nameservers.

Domingo Ignacio Galdos
  • 272
  • 1
  • 5
  • OK so I use my own nameserver. Is there anyway I could just add ONLY domain nameserver under my management so I could point it to webhost instead of adding A record. – sg552 Feb 04 '12 at 08:21
  • Hypothetically, if you used your own nameserver, you could CNAME domains to your webhost's server. The httpd on their server would still have to know what to do when clients present your original domain in the Host HTTP header, of course. – Domingo Ignacio Galdos Feb 04 '12 at 08:48
  • With that said your question's a little confusing. Can you clarify what you want and why? – Domingo Ignacio Galdos Feb 04 '12 at 08:49
  • Hi there. I update my question. – sg552 Feb 04 '12 at 14:40
0

You /could/ do this, but the nameservers for TLDs are under enough load without going ahead and providing full DNS record storage for you. Thus the apex of the zone is delegated to your own nameservers and you're responsible for it - you can do exactly the same thing yourself with any subdomains within yours.

Olipro
  • 2,967
  • 18
  • 18