Newbie DNS questions

[Kevin Darcy]

Bob wrote:

>Hello.
>
>I have a newbie question regarding DNS and a problem
>
>Question
>I have purchased a domain, trebortech.net.  What is the actual domain
>name, www.trebortech.net or just trebortech.net?
>
>Problem
>I administer the domain at verisign.  I have been using Direct TV DSL
>to handle the DNS, since I was with them.  Now that they are getting
>out of the business I have switcehd to SBC.  In preparation for the
>big move, I signed up at www.everydns.net for an account and created
>and A record pointing to my existing IP.  Then I went to verisign and
>changed my DNS records to point to NS1.EVERYDNS.NET and
>NS2.EVERYDNS.NET.  I waited 24 hours for that to take effect and it
>appears to have changed.  I was able to browse to my site and my email
>server is still receiving new email.
>
>Next, I reconfigured my router to use the SBC DSL and updated my A
>record at www.everydns.net to reflect my new IP address.  Now, several
>hours later, I can ping trebortech.net, browse to trebortech.net, and
>receive email.  But I cannot browse to www.trebortech.net.
>
>Have I done something wrong or do I need to add more DNS entries.  Or,
>do I just need to wait longer?
>

Well, technically every name in the DNS namespace is a "domain name". 
However, in common usage, that term is reserved for domains that contain 
names underneath them, or for *zones*, which is a concept important to 
nameserver configuration and the iterative resolution process, but not 
if one just views the DNS namespace as an arbitrary hierarchy of names.

Having said all of that, if the name www.trebortech.net does not already 
exist (which appears to be the case) and you want that name to resolve 
to an address, then you need to add an appropriate A record to the zone 
which contains that name (trebortech.net). This A record would be 
independent of any A record you may already have in the zone for the 
name trebortech.net itself.

                                                                       
                                                         - Kevin