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DNS aliases

Keywords:  DNS aliases

Question:

I'm trying to lookup a FQDN from an IP address for a host that has several aliases. It seems that iAddr2Host and ipAddr2Host can only return one value, that of the real name. Is there any way I can query what the aliases are?

Answer:

No, you cannot do that. The reason for this has to do with how DNS works. You can have multiple aliases that are CNAME records. Each CNAME record takes an alias name and points it at another name. Ultimately, a chain of CNAME records ends up pointing to an A record, with the A record pointing a name at an actual IP address. When you do a forward lookup of a host name, it ultimately results in resolving an A record to its IP address value.

The reverse of this process is to turn an IP address back into a host name. This is implemented using PTR [pointer] records in a reverse lookup domain. The IP address can then be used to lookup a host name. However, regardless of how many CNAME records were used to implement aliases for the host, the host's IP address only ever resolves back to a single name. I suppose that you could implement multiple PTR records, but that would only serve to cause confusion because you would not have any control over which one of the PTR records was used at any given time and this would mean that successive attempts at the reverse lookup could result in different host names being returned.


Article ID:   W15175
File Created: 2002:09:05:13:50:20
Last Updated: 2002:09:05:13:50:20