Every device on the internet is found by a number — an IP address like 203.0.113.10. Nobody wants to remember those, so we use names instead: kumodns.com, example.co.uk, your-shop.sg.
DNS is the system that turns the name into the number. It runs quietly behind every website you open, every email you send and every app on your phone.
What happens when you type a domain
It looks instant. It is actually four questions, asked in order, in about the time it takes to blink.
- Your computer asks a resolver. Usually your internet provider's, or a public one like
1.1.1.1. The resolver's job is to go and find the answer for you. - The resolver asks a root server: "who handles
.com?" - It asks the
.comservers: "who handlesexample.com?" They reply with the nameservers for that domain — for a domain here, ours. - It asks those nameservers for the actual record, and gets back
203.0.113.10.
Your browser then connects to that address. The whole chain normally finishes in well under a tenth of a second.
The important part for you is step 3. Whoever the .com servers name is who the world will listen to. That is what you are setting when you point your registrar at our nameservers — and until you do, nothing you change in this portal has any effect, because nobody is asking us.
Nobody asks twice
If every lookup went all the way to the root, DNS would collapse under its own weight. So every answer carries a TTL — a time to live, in seconds — and everyone who receives it is allowed to remember it for that long.
Your browser caches it. Your operating system caches it. Your resolver caches it, for everybody who uses that resolver.
⚠️ This is why a change is not instant, and it is the single most common surprise in DNS. When you edit a record here it reaches our nameservers in seconds — but a resolver that asked an hour ago is still confidently handing out the old answer until its copy expires. Nothing is broken and there is nothing to fix; the world is still holding an answer you already replaced.
Two practical consequences:
- Lower the TTL before a planned move, not after. Drop it to five minutes a day ahead, make the change, put it back. Lowering it at the same time as the change is too late — the old TTL is what the world is already counting down.
- Checking from your own machine is the least reliable test. You are the most likely person to have the old answer cached. Use the DNS lookup tool, which asks fresh every time.
The full version of this — why some devices ignore the TTL entirely, and why 48 hours is the figure to quote — is in why a DNS change is not instant.
The pieces you will meet
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Zone | Everything DNS knows about one domain — all its records, in one place. One domain, one zone. |
| Record | A single fact about the domain. www is at this address; mail goes to that server. |
| Nameserver | A machine that answers questions about your zone. Yours are ours, once your registrar points at them. |
| Resolver | The machine that does the asking on your behalf, and caches what it learns. |
| TTL | How long everyone else may remember an answer before asking again. |
| Registrar | Who you bought the domain from. They control which nameservers the world is told about. |
⚠️ Your registrar and your DNS host do not have to be the same company, and here they are not. You keep the domain where you bought it; we answer the questions about it. The only thing the registrar needs from you is the list of nameservers.
The records that do the work
You will use a handful, and rarely the rest:
- A — the domain points at an IPv4 address. The workhorse.
- AAAA — the same, for IPv6.
- CNAME — this name is an alias for another name.
- MX — where email for this domain should be delivered.
- TXT — free text, which in practice means SPF, DKIM and DMARC for email, plus verification records for services that ask you to prove you own the domain.
Record types covers all of them, including the ones that catch people out.
What DNS does not do
It is worth being clear about the edges, because a lot of problems get blamed on DNS that are not DNS.
- It does not host your website. It says where the site lives. The site itself is somewhere else.
- It does not move your email. It says which server accepts it.
- It does not know whether any of that is working. A record can point perfectly at a server that is switched off. DNS will keep answering correctly all day.
If the name resolves to the right address and the page still does not load, the problem is at the other end. The DNS lookup tool will tell you which of the two you are looking at in about five seconds.
Where to go next
- Create your account, then add your first zone.
- Point your registrar at our nameservers — the step that makes everything else count.
- Editing DNS records for the day-to-day work.
- DNS glossary when a word turns up that nobody explained.
Last reviewed 2026-09-25.
Open a ticket from the control panel, or use the contact form if you cannot sign in. If a domain is down, the status page is the fastest way to find out whether it is us.