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What are glue records?

Donell Cox
  • Updated

Question

What are glue records?

 

Answer

When setting up nameservers at your domain registrar, it is necessary to provide an IP address of the authoritative nameserver. This IP address is called the glue record.

For example, if you have two nameservers that you own and are trying to make authoritative, you would give your domain registrar both the names and IP addresses:

ns1.domain.tld. IP-to-nameserver
ns2.domain.tld. IP-to-nameserver

To view your glue records, use the dig command:

  1. Log in to your server via SSH or via the WHM Terminal feature.
  2. Run the following command against one of the root nameservers to see the glue IP address: 
    dig @a.gtld-servers.net domain.tld NS
  3. Observe in the output the "Additional Section", which contains the glue IP records: 
    ;; QUESTION SECTION:
    ;domain.tld. IN NS

    ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
    domain.tld. 172800 IN NS ns1.domain.tld.
    domain.tld. 172800 IN NS ns2.domain.tld.

    ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
    ns1.domain.tld. 172800 IN A 192.88.99.21
    ns2.domain.tld. 172800 IN A 192.88.99.22
  4. If these IP addresses in the "Additional Section" are not the IP addresses for your nameservers, you need to change them at your domain registrar.

To find a list of popular domain registrars, review this article:

How to set up nameservers with Domain name registrars

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