A Record

What is an A record

The A record is the most basic type of DNS record. It maps a hostname (e.g. www.example.com) to an IPv4 address (e.g. 93.184.216.34). When your browser looks up where to connect, this is typically what it requests.

For IPv6 addresses, the equivalent type is AAAA (four «A»s).

Example

example.com.       IN  A     93.184.216.34
www.example.com.   IN  A     93.184.216.34
api.example.com.   IN  A     203.0.113.42

Multiple A records (round-robin)

You can have multiple A records for the same hostname, pointing to different IPs. Resolvers will return the full list and clients will pick one (usually the first). This is called DNS round-robin and is a simple form of load balancing.

example.com.  IN  A  93.184.216.34
example.com.  IN  A  93.184.216.35
example.com.  IN  A  93.184.216.36

Note: DNS round-robin does not replace a real load balancer — it has no health checks. If one IP goes down, clients will keep trying it.

Apex records — why example.com cannot be a CNAME

At the apex (example.com, without www), you must use an A record (or AAAA), not a CNAME. The DNS standard does not allow a CNAME at the apex. Some DNS providers (Cloudflare, Route 53, DNSimple) support ALIAS or CNAME flattening to work around this, but that is a provider feature, not a standard.