In Chapter 1, The Domain Name Ecosystem, we constructed the analogy that you could break down a domain's Whois record into logical chunks, such as Registrant, Admin Contact, Registrar Status, and Nameservers, which comprise the logical anatomy of a domain name.
The DNS Resource Records (RRs) are what comprise the actual data values that nameservers exchange. A DNS zone can be broken down into RRs, and RRs have specific formats, functions, and uses.
We won't list them all here; we'll cover the common ones and some not-so-common ones that may see growing usage in the years to come.
This section does not purport to deconstruct and define the RR types in minute RFC-compliant detail. Cricket Liu and Paul Ablitz's DNS and Bind, as well as Ron Aitchison's Pro DNS and Bind 10, do superb jobs of this.
What we will concentrate...