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Johannes Ernst
Asked: 2010-10-02 16:01:09 +0800 CST

Multiple DNS answers for same domain eg google.com -- what does it mean?

  • 772

I noticed that dig google.com produces four distinct IP addresses. What does that mean? It could be

  • use any, doesn't matter
  • try the first, if it doesn't respond, try the next (and so forth)
  • or ...?

Or is this just supposed to be round-robin? (If so, why would it return 4 values, instead of just 1?)

I'm sort of hoping it means that browsers would try all four in sequence until they got one that works.

Here's what I'm getting: dig google.com:

;; QUESTION SECTION:`
;google.com.            IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
google.com.     293 IN  A   74.125.19.99
google.com.     293 IN  A   74.125.19.103
google.com.     293 IN  A   74.125.19.104
google.com.     293 IN  A   74.125.19.147

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
google.com.     81797   IN  NS  ns2.google.com.
google.com.     81797   IN  NS  ns4.google.com.
google.com.     81797   IN  NS  ns1.google.com.
google.com.     81797   IN  NS  ns3.google.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.google.com.     255049  IN  A   216.239.32.10
ns2.google.com.     230304  IN  A   216.239.34.10
ns3.google.com.     231860  IN  A   216.239.36.10
ns4.google.com.     58735   IN  A   216.239.38.10`
domain-name-system bind

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It is round robin. You see all 4 when you dig it, because dig asks the DNS server to return all records for that name.

    • 7

  2. dig google.com returns only 1 ANSWER (EDIT: This is in my case but can be different depending on where you are located - thanks to MarkM comment below), the 4 other you see are in Authority section or Additional sections and they are the Name Servers names and IPs and not google.com IP. google.com IP is in Answer section: 64.233.163.104:

    ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 4

    So 1 ANSWER, 4 AUTHORITY and 4 ADDITIONAL:

    ;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.com.            IN    A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
google.com.        300    IN    A    64.233.163.104

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
google.com.        137782    IN    NS    ns1.google.com.
google.com.        137782    IN    NS    ns4.google.com.
google.com.        137782    IN    NS    ns3.google.com.
google.com.        137782    IN    NS    ns2.google.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.google.com.        83943    IN    A    216.239.32.10
ns2.google.com.        47822    IN    A    216.239.34.10
ns3.google.com.        47822    IN    A    216.239.36.10
ns4.google.com.        47822    IN    A    216.239.38.10
    • 2

  3. It means that the name google.com resolves to 4 different ip addresses. It actually resolves to many more, but you got 4 of them. For all practical purposes the 4 ips are interchangeable. However, whether a browser will try them in sequence until one works is wholly dependent on the browser. And some browsers cache results themselves, and are known to ignore ttl, so be careful trying to predict what a browser will do.

    • 1