Domain records in short are the direction signs for domains. They contain vital information to make sure that your requests arrive to the correct destination.

What is TTL?
TTL, or Time To Live, is the time (in seconds) a record will be cached by caching servers. This is usually 86400 seconds, or 24 hours but can be changed by the domain owner.

What is the Priority?
Priority is mostly used for MX records to indicate the preferred order in which they are used. A lower number means it is more preferred.

What is the Data value?
Data is what a subdomain will be translated into behind the scenes and is required for them to work.
For example, “google.com” translates to “64.15.124.249”, the IP address a request will be sent to.

What is the Type?
Different types are used for different purposes. We’ve listed a few of the most used ones below.

A: Points to an IPv4 address.
AAAA: Points to an IPv6 address.
NS: Points to a nameserver, can either be a hostname or an IP address.
CNAME: Alias for another record.
MX: Points to a Mail Exchange (Mail server, contains a priority).
TXT: Text record, can contain information for validation.
SRV: Points to services. (Contains a priority, Weight (W), Port (P) and a target)

For a complete list of record types and technical explanation, click here.