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DNS Lookup from
28 global locations.

Query DNS records for any domain from 28 servers across 16 countries. Verify propagation, check configuration, and troubleshoot resolution issues.

28 Global Locations Results in Seconds No Account Required

Query DNS records from multiple resolvers across 28 global locations. Pick a record type and enter any domain — A, AAAA, MX, NS, TXT, SOA, CNAME, PTR and SRV are all supported.

Note: All checks are public. To keep your checks private, create a free account.

Global Network Diagnostics

Run a check to see your service from around the world.

  • Tested from 28 monitoring locations worldwide
  • Results in seconds, not minutes
  • Shareable result links for your team
  • No account or signup required

What is a DNS Lookup?

The Domain Name System (DNS) is the internet's phone book — it translates human-readable domain names like example.com into IP addresses that computers use to communicate. Every time you visit a website, send an email, or connect to any internet service, DNS resolution happens silently in the background.

When you perform a DNS lookup, you are querying a chain of servers to retrieve the records associated with a domain name. This resolution chain works as follows:

  1. Browser cache — Your browser checks its own local cache for a recently resolved answer.
  2. OS resolver — If no cache hit, the operating system checks its own resolver cache and the /etc/hosts file.
  3. Recursive resolver — Your ISP or configured DNS server (e.g., 8.8.8.8, 1.1.1.1) takes over and performs the full lookup on your behalf.
  4. Root nameservers — The recursive resolver contacts a root nameserver, which knows where to find the authoritative servers for each top-level domain (TLD).
  5. TLD nameservers — The root refers the resolver to the TLD nameservers (e.g., the .com nameservers), which know the authoritative nameservers for the specific domain.
  6. Authoritative nameservers — The final step: the domain's own nameservers respond with the actual DNS records requested.

DNS matters for everything from web browsing and email delivery to API connectivity, CDN routing, and service discovery. Because DNS records are cached at multiple levels, changes can take time to propagate globally — which is exactly why running a lookup from multiple locations simultaneously is valuable. Emercom queries from 28 locations to show you what resolvers around the world are currently seeing.

DNS Record Types Explained

Each DNS record type serves a different purpose. Understanding what each one does helps you query the right record when diagnosing issues.

Type Purpose Example
A Maps a domain to an IPv4 address. The most fundamental record type — used for web servers, APIs, and any service reachable by hostname. 93.184.216.34
AAAA Maps a domain to an IPv6 address. The IPv6 equivalent of the A record, increasingly important as IPv4 address space is exhausted. 2606:2800:220:1:248:1893:25c8:1946
CNAME Canonical Name — creates an alias for another domain. Commonly used to point subdomains (like www) to a root domain, or to map custom domains to CDN or SaaS endpoints. www → example.com
MX Mail Exchange — specifies the mail servers responsible for accepting email for a domain. Each record includes a priority value; lower numbers are preferred. mail.example.com (priority 10)
NS Name Server — lists the authoritative nameservers for a domain. These are the servers that hold the definitive DNS records for the domain. ns1.example.com
TXT Text records used to store arbitrary string data. Critical for email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), domain ownership verification, and service configuration tokens. v=spf1 include:_spf.example.com ~all
SOA Start of Authority — contains administrative information about a DNS zone, including the primary nameserver, the email of the zone administrator, the zone serial number, and timing parameters for zone transfers and caching. Primary NS, admin email, serial number
PTR Pointer record — performs reverse DNS lookups, mapping an IP address back to a hostname. Used by mail servers to verify sender identity and reduce spam. 34.216.184.93.in-addr.arpa → example.com
SRV Service record — specifies the location and port of servers for specific protocols and services. Used by SIP (VoIP), XMPP (messaging), and various autodiscovery mechanisms. _sip._tcp.example.com

Why Check DNS From Multiple Locations?

DNS is not instantaneous or globally synchronized. Records are cached at every layer of the resolution chain — in your browser, your OS, your ISP's resolver, and intermediate recursive resolvers worldwide. This is by design: caching reduces load on authoritative nameservers and speeds up responses. The downside is that after a DNS change, the old record lives on in those caches until the Time to Live (TTL) expires.

There are several important reasons why the same domain may return different answers from different locations:

  • DNS propagation — TTL expiry happens at different times across resolvers around the world. Some resolvers may be serving your new record while others are still returning the old one, causing inconsistent behavior for users in different regions.
  • GeoDNS — Many services intentionally return different IP addresses based on the location of the querying resolver. A CDN might return a Frankfurt edge node IP to European resolvers and a New York IP to North American ones. Multi-location DNS lookup lets you verify that GeoDNS is routing correctly for each region.
  • Split-horizon DNS — Some organizations serve different DNS records for internal and external queries. Testing from multiple external locations confirms what the public internet sees versus what internal resolvers return.
  • CDN steering differences — Performance-based DNS (where the fastest edge is returned) may serve different IPs to different locations even without explicit GeoDNS configuration. Seeing all the returned values helps you understand your CDN's global distribution.
  • Misconfigured or incomplete propagation — After migrating to a new DNS provider or changing nameservers, some secondary resolvers may be slow to update. A multi-location lookup immediately shows which regions are still resolving to old records.

Emercom runs all 28 DNS queries in parallel from geographically distributed nodes, giving you a complete propagation snapshot in seconds.

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