Should my dedicated static IP address point to my domain?
I purchased a dedicated static IP address from my hosting company to host my domain name. The IP will point to me domain when I ping it. However, when I conduct reverse DNS lookup, my dedicated IP points to somewhere else - other domain.
when I check with the tech support, they said that they are not able to change that because the domain belongs their data center.
Are they telling me the truth? As my understanding, the dedicated static IP should belong to my domain only. Please help! Thank you.
The A record (www.yoursite.com or mail.yoursite.com) will be controlled by you - you'll have your registrar (GoDaddy?) point to Name Servers that you control. That works for the forward lookups.
The reverse lookups (PTR) records don't belong to you. That address belongs to the ISP. As such, when someone goes looking for what that address resolves to, it's going to resolve to a name of their choosing. You have a small chance of getting them to change it, but I would not hold your breath.
They need to keep things organized on their side as well... Think about it like this, from their perspective...
66.3.3.3 66-3-3-3-isp.com
66.3.3.4 66-3-3-4-isp.com
66.3.3.5 yoursite.yourdomain.com
66.3.3.6 66-3-3-6-isp.com
Now if you leave, it's even more work for them to change it back... Like I said, don't hold your breath. :)
There are two concepts - forward and reverse DNS lookup. Forward lookups are lookups that resolve domain names to IP addresses. If you do:
nslookup your-domain-name.com
you should get your IP. This is what you can control as you own your domain. Each domain is found by looking from top level domains downwards toward your domain name. I.e. in case of abc.def.example.com, you would start by asking the DNS server responsible for com, then continue downwards asking the DNS server responsible for com.example and so on until you reach the DNS that can resolve abc.def.example.com itself (which may be the DNS server for example.com by the way, depending on the setup of subdomains).
Reverse lookups are different. They map IPs to domain names by following a different route. They do not follow the domains, but IP address allocations. That is, this is the responsibility internet provider responsible for the block of IPs to which your IP belongs to. You don't have the control over that, this needs to be resolved by the entity who controls the IP address itself.
If you change your internet provider, you will change your IP and you can change your domain to point to that IP easily. However, you will need to contact you internet provider to update the reverse lookup.
Take a look here for a more info:
-
http://www.ntchosting.com/dns-terminology.html
- Especially this page for reverse DNS: http://www.ntchosting.com/dns/reverse-dns.html
- http://www.tech-faq.com/reverse-dns.html
- http://www.crazysquirrel.com/computing/general/how-dns-works.jspx
Hope this helps.