An A-record is a entry in the DNS zone file that maps each domain name (e.g.domainmonster.com) or subdomain (e.g. subdomain.domainmonster.com) to a specific IP address.

The A-record specifies the IP address to which the user would be sent for each domain or subdomain. This meaning that you can have different subdomains of your website resolving to different IP addresses, which could be useful if they are hosted on different servers.

For example, you can have abc.domain.com point to one IP address, and xyz.domain.com point to a different IP address

A CNAME (canonical name) record is an entry in your DNS zone file which aliases an FQDN (fully qualified domain name) to another FQDN (such as www.yourdomain.com to yourdomain.com). In other words, the CNAME record specifies another domain name (within your site) to which a visitor to the first domain would be directed.

* Example CNAME record:
* Alias: forum.domainmonster.com - Hostname: www.monster.forum.com
* This would cause visitors to forum.domainmonster.com to be redirected to www.monster.forum.com.

An MX (mail exchange) record is an entry in your DNS zone file which specifies a mail server to handle a domain's email. Meaning that when someone sends an email to you@yourdomain.com, the email will be delivered to the mail server specified in the MX record for yourdomain.com.

* Example MX record for yourmonster.com:
* MX record: mail.yourmonster.com
* This would cause emails sent to you@yourdomain.com to be delivered to the mail server mail.yourmonster.com.

An SPF record is used to allow the receiving MTA (message transfer agent) to interrogate the name server of a domain name which is used for sending email.

When an e-mail message is received, the mail server checks the SPF record in the DNS to see if it matches the actual IP address of the message. If it does, the e-mail is considered valid.

In order to use SPF, the domain sending e-mails must establish an SPF record that is published in DNS records. When the e-mail passes through the DNS server, it is compared to the SPF record for that domain to determine if the sender is indeed authorised to transmit e-mails from that sender's address. (this can be used to decrease the amount of spam sent from unauthorised addresses.)

The logical name assigned to a computer, on a network, such a name server or mail server or on the Web, most hosts are named WWW; for example, www.domainmonster.com. If a site is composed of several hosts, they might be given different names such as support.monster.com and sales.monster.com.

A subdomain is the domain name which will appear to the left of your registered domain.

For example, in the URL faq.domainmonster.com, faq is a subdomain.

Subdomains are very useful and used to divide websites into different content sections.

Due to A-records ability to point to different sub domains at different IP addresses, subdomains can be very useful if parts of your website are hosted on different servers.

A root server is any of the small number of domain name system (DNS) servers on the Internet that contain the IP addresses of the top level domain (TLD) registry organisations that maintain the global domains (e.g., .com, .org, net, .gov and .edu) and the country code domains (e.g., .uk, .ca, .cn, .dk, .fr, and .jp).

A Glue Record is an A-record which is created when you specify specific name servers for your domain. If your name servers have a hostname that is a subdomain of the domain name itself, then the Glue Record for that hostname must be included when specifying the name servers.

A cache is a record of previously resolved queries. Both DNS servers and home computers can build up caches; as requests are made on other servers, so records are added to the cache. Caching has the twin benefits of offering the user faster response time (e.g. Faster browsing time) and reduced network traffic. A bad cache can be a liability as it may give the requester inaccurate and out of date information.