Hierarchy, Domains & Zones

Root does not forward your query to the TLD. Nothing is forwarded. The resolver makes every single query itself, and comes back to the middle after each one — twice holding nothing but a pointer.

Press Start — or click any server in the diagram

Domain vs. Zone

You just watched root and com return ANSWER 0 — not because they were hiding the address, but because www.google.com isn’t in their zones. A zone ends where a delegation begins. Google’s nameservers had the A record because google.com is their zone; on this site the same role is roeiam.online on ns11/ns12.

• Domain — what you register and everything under it. roeiam + .online; blog.roeiam.online is still part of that domain.
• Zone — the records a specific server set owns. File in BIND, table in Infoblox, partition in AD. Authority lives here, not in the registrar’s marketing copy.
• Server ≠ zone — ns11.domaincontrol.com is a hostname under .com that answers for .online. The NS record in the .online delegation is what ties it to your zone; the hostname alone carries no authority.

Ticket pattern: “record exists in the console but doesn’t resolve” → edited in the parent zone while the world gets referred to the child nameservers. Ask: which zone answers this name, and which zone did you touch?

Querying the right layer

Same four questions for any record type — NS, A, MX, TXT. Most tickets: compare two of these and you’re done.