Zonetiedostot

Zonetiedostot, often translated as "zone files," are essential components of the Domain Name System (DNS). They are plain text files that contain the authoritative records for a specific DNS zone. A DNS zone represents a portion of the DNS namespace that is managed by a particular organization or administrator. For example, the zone file for "example.com" would contain all the DNS records associated with that domain.

Each zone file consists of a series of resource records (RRs). These records define various aspects of the zone, such as the IP addresses associated with domain names (A records and AAAA records), mail server information (MX records), and other critical DNS data. The most common types of resource records found in zone files include:

* **SOA (Start of Authority):** This record identifies the primary name server for the zone and contains administrative information.

* **NS (Name Server):** This record specifies the name servers responsible for the zone.

* **A (Address):** This record maps a hostname to an IPv4 address.

* **AAAA (IPv6 Address):** This record maps a hostname to an IPv6 address.

* **CNAME (Canonical Name):** This record creates an alias for a hostname.

* **MX (Mail Exchanger):** This record specifies the mail servers responsible for receiving email for a domain.

* **TXT (Text):** This record allows administrators to store arbitrary text, often used for verification purposes like SPF (Sender Policy Framework) or DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail).

Zone files are managed on DNS servers and are used by recursive DNS resolvers to answer queries for hostnames within their respective zones. When a DNS query is made, the authoritative name server for the requested zone reads its zone file to find the corresponding resource record and return the requested information.