Domain Name System - This is an Internet system that relates domain names into IP addresses. DNS can be considered something similar to a phone book. When you move from one location to another, your name stays the same, but your phone number may change. In order to point your name to the new phone number, you must contact the telephone service provider so they assign you the new phone number and update all directory information to reflect you as pointing to this new phone number. In this way, the IP address can be compared to a phone number: When someone calls http://www.example.com/, your ISP looks at the DNS server, and asks "how do I contact example.com?" The DNS server responds: "It can be found at 198.105.232.4". As the Internet understands it, this can be considered the phone number for the server, which houses the http://www.example.com web site.

The DNS records for your domain are kept on a name server in a place called a DNS zone. When you register a domain by means of the control panel, all DNS records are automatically created for you, but in some cases you may need to setup custom records to your DNS zone. An example would be when you want all email to be processed by an external mail server rather than by the built-in mail system. However, such user intervention requires knowledge of DNS configuration and clear understanding of what is to be done.

If your domain is registered with us, there will be domain management options on the main page of the account control panel.

From this location you can manage all aspects of your domains registration. You can also change your domain name servers.

For more information regarding the management of your domain registration through IX Web Hosting, please refer to the Domain section of the Billing Manual.

You can usually change your domain name servers at the registrars' website or by contacting the registrar. Your name servers with us are sent in the initial hosting account email and can also be found in the hosting account control panel.

Custom DNS records are required to manage any outside server through our name servers. This can be useful in many instances, such as when setting up an outside mail server or to map a domain to a different server.

Removing the default DNS A or MX records will make your site inaccessible. For this reason the only way to remove the default dns records is to turn web or mail service off. This will remove all hosting content and release your ip address.

An A record gives you the IP address of a domain. This allows users that visit www.example.com to go to the right IP address. It can also be used to map a domain to a different server or a sub domain to the correct IP address.

Custom MX records should be added when you want to use your external mail servers to process your e-mail. To use your external servers instead of those you get by default, you need to disable mail service on the Domain Settings page. To use the external mail servers in addition to those you get by default, you need to keep mail service enabled in the control panel. The priority of the custom MX record will define whether your external servers will act as primary or secondary. For instance, if you set the priority of the custom MX record higher than 10, your external mail server will be used as secondary. If you set the priority of the custom MX record lower than 10, your external mail server will be used as primary. In the first case, your mail will be sent to your external mail server until it goes down or becomes otherwise inaccessible. Then the default mail server will take over.

CNAME records are used to map aliases with domain names.