Because it's super logical to provide people with a good explanation below explaining what some hosting terms mean and do anyway:
What is DNS?
DNS stands for: ‘Domain Name System’ and converts domain names to IP addresses.
Within the DNS of your domain name, you can set where the domain, subdomains and mail records may point to. Managing the DNS can be found within the hosting panel (go to the menu, support and hosting panel) When under tab ‘’Domain and Hosting' your domain name you will see at the bottom the button ‘DNS management’
What is TTL?
TTL is a value in the DNS that indicates how quickly/frequently the DNS records references in the DNS are updated. TTL stands for Time To Live. At Analyst ICT, the TTL defaults to 3600 seconds. Should you want to make changes in the DNS and make sure that the changes are known on the Internet as soon as possible, you can adjust the TTL for your domain to 300 seconds ( 5 minutes) at DNS management in the hosting panel. Below is a more detailed description of exactly what TTL does:
Time To Live values occur in the Domain Name System where they are set by an authoritative name server for a Resource Record (a readable computer address and an IP address). When a nameserver with a cache requests the Resource Record, it is also cached for the length of time indicated by the TTL. If the nameserver is asked for the same information before the TTL expires, then the version is returned from cache instead of requesting the Resource Record again. A name server may also respond with a response that does not have the IP address for the domain (using the NXDOMAIN code or no such domain); these typically have a short Time To Live (3 hours at most).
Short Time To Live values can cause greater load on the authoritative name server, but they can be useful when the address of an important service (such as a Web server or an MX record) is changed. DNS administrators often lower the TTL of such an address before it changes to minimize inconvenience to users.
The unit used is seconds. A commonly used TTL value for DNS is 86400 seconds, which is 24 hours. A TTL value of 86400 would mean that if a DNS record was changed, DNS servers around the world could still use the old value from their cache for up to 24 hours.
What is an A record?
An A-record is a type of record within the DNS (Domain Name System). Using an A-record, you can have a (sub)domain point to an (ipv4) IP address.
For example: www.jouw-eigen-domein.nl want you to point to a server/destination with IP address: 12.34.567.89
What is a CNAME?
A CNAME record is a type of record within the DNS (Domain Name System). Through a CNAME record you can create a reference to an A record. (A record alias). CNAME is an abbreviation of Canonical Name record.
With an A Record, you can create subdomains and domains refer to IP addresses separately. When all records/subdomains point to the same IP address, you can choose to have the main (sub)domain by means of an A record to refer to the IP address and the other records/subdomains by means of a CNAME to refer to this A record. The advantage is that when you have to deal with an IP change only 1 record needs to be changed.
We understand that this is still not always clear to everyone so if help is needed we are happy to help. Please take a moment contact on.
