FAQs – DNS

My nameservers are pointed somewhere besides GKG, can I use GKG's parking, DNS hosting and web hosting services?

No, in order for a customer to use any of GKG's services on one of their domains they must use GKG's nameservers. This means that if you have a website up with another company and you want to change an MX record or set up parking with GKG you will need to point your nameservers away from your current hosting provider to GKG. This in turn, will cause any service with another provider to stop resolving or simply put "not work".

No need to fear however, with the proper use of GKG's DNS hosting you can point your A record (website) and MX record (email) to separate providers.

Back to top I am required to provide DNS information during the domain registration process. What is the DNS information used for?

Every registrant provides DNS information for each domain registered. This information refers to the server that will answer for your domain. GKG provides you with four options to designate a DNS entry (We automatically configure your DNS for options 1-3):

  1. Host with GKG - this option allows you to take advantage of one of GKG's hosting packages.
  2. Basic Parking - this option allows you to park your domains with GKG for FREE! You will also receive:
    • 1 Coming Soon page -or-
    • 1 URL Forwarding option (cloaking available)
    • 5 Email aliases
  3. Deluxe Parking - this option allows you not only to park your domain with GKG, but receive all of these benefits as well (for only $2.95!)
    • 100 URL Forwarding (cloaking available)
    • 1 POP3 email account with 10MB Quota
    • 100 Email Aliases
    • Webmail also available (additional $9.99/year)
  4. Host with another provider - this option requires that you have the primary and secondary DNS of your provider and carries no charge from GKG. You will need to contact the company that will host your web site to get this information. You will be required to enter the nameservers instead of the IP numbers.
Please see our pricing page for current pricing detail. Back to top How can I add a CNAME for my .mac account?

In order to create a CNAME with GKG you will first need to order DNS hosting, which you can do by clicking here.

Once you have DNS hosting you will need to configure it.

First, delete the following IPV4 A record by clicking "Delete" next to it.

Host IP Time to Live
www 216.217.57.23 1 Day

Then, add the following CNAME record:

Host Canonical Name Time to Live
www web.mac.com 1 Day
Back to top How do I change/update my nameservers (DNS)?

You can change your nameservers by logging into your GKG account. If you have more than one domain name, select the domain(s) you would like to change the name servers on and press CONTINUE.

On the next page, simply scroll down to the bottom and find the "Nameservers" section and enter the new name servers you wish to use. For those editing only one domain, click "Change" to access the nameserver change form.

NOTE: Name Servers can not be IP addresses, they must be fully qualified domain names (FQDN), and must be registered with the registry. Proper syntax for nameservers is as follows:

If you get an error message "Not a registered (COM)" then the name server does not exist at the registry. You will need to contact whomever gave you those name servers and ask them to register them for you. If you are entering your own name servers and your domain name is registered with GKG.NET, INC., then you can register those name servers here free of charge.

The domain you are creating the name server(s) for must be registered with GKG.NET, INC.

Back to top How do I modify my registered nameserver's IP address?

To modify your DNS, go to our Manage Domains section. After selecting the domain to modify, scroll down to "DNS Hosts". The nameservers that you have registered will be listed in this section. To update them, click "Edit" next to the appropriate entry.

You MUST meet the following criteria for your form to be processed:

  1. The parent domain must be registered with GKG (ex: if you want to register 'NS#.DOMAIN.COM', 'DOMAIN.COM' must first be registered with GKG.NET).
  2. Your IP number must be static (excludes servers with cable modem with DHCP assigned IP numbers).
  3. Request must come from current Registrant or current Administrative/Technical contact.
There is no charge for this service.

Back to top How do I register my own DNS?

To register your own DNS, go to our Register/Modify a DNS section. Select Register DNS and fill in the form and press submit to provide GKG with the needed information. You MUST meet the following criteria for your form to be processed:

  1. The parent domain must be registered with GKG
    (ex: if you want to register 'NS#.DOMAIN.COM', 'DOMAIN.COM' must first be registered with GKG.NET).
  2. Your IP number must be static (excludes servers with cable modem with DHCP assigned IP numbers).
  3. Request must come from current Registrant or current Administrative/Technical contact.

There is no charge for this service. Back to top How do I register my own name server?

You can register or modify registered name servers by logging into your GKG account and going to My Account -> Manage Domains. Name servers need to be registered individually, so if you have multiple domain names select the domain name you need to add name servers for and click CONTINUE.

If you scroll down the page you will find a box titled "DNS Hosts". This is your record of registered name servers and their glue records (the IP address they resolve to). In this box you can either register a new name server or modify the glue record of an existing record.

Once you create a name server record it can be used for any domain name.

Back to top How do I delete a name server?

Name servers are only allowed to be deleted if there are no domain names using them. If you would like to delete a name server rather than modify it, please use this page to contact us.

Back to top How do I submit my own Delegation Signer records for DNSSEC?

Login here https://www.gkg.net/protected/domain/modify and select the domain for which you would like to submit DS records.

Scroll down to the "Delegation Signer Records" and click "add." When done just click "Add Key."

We also have a RESTful API available for submitting DS records: more information can be found at http://www.gkg.net/ws/ds.html

Back to top What are GKG's nameservers?

For Parking And DNS Hosting Customers:

For Linux Hosting (Web21) Customers:

For Linux Hosting (Web22) Customers:

For Linux Hosting (Web27) Customers:

For Linux Hosting (Web31) Customers:

For Linux Hosting (Web54) Customers:

For Linux Hosting (Web58) Customers:

For Windows Hosting:

Back to top What is DNS Zone Hosting and how does it work?

This short documentation should not be used as a full lesson in DNS. It should be used only for a quick lesson on how DNS works.

SOA (Start of Authority)

  1. The @ symbol stands for the ORIGIN record (also known as the domain name)
  2. The serial number will increment when the zone records are updated
  3. The authoritative name server will not be changeable.
  4. You may change the administrative email address, but the email address will be listed as user.domain.com. Remember the @ symbol is the origin so it can not be used within an email address.

IPV4 Addresses (A Records)

  1. To set up a new A record, simply supply the host, the IP address to which the host will be directed and the time to live (TTL) setting. If you want to set up a zone record for your website, you might set up www as the host and then the IP address for your web server, and the TTL (Time To Live) setting as 1 day. You might also set up the @ (origin) record as the host and use the same IP address as you did for www. This way visitors can get to your site by typing either: http://www.domain.com or just http://domain.com.
  2. If you want to use email (mail is a host), you might set up an A record for mail, pointing to either the same or a different IP address. A valid A record for mail must exist if you are uising an MX record (explained below)
  3. The * refers to a wildcard and means any undefined hosts will be forwarded to that IP address.
  4. TTL (Time To Live) is sent when an outside server queries our DNS for a specific zone. If the TTL is set to 1 day, and a specific server queries our DNS for your domain, then that specific server will NOT re-query our DNS again until the 1 day is up. Therefore if changes to the zone are made within that 1 day, users of that server will not see them until after the TTL has expired. The TTL only makes a difference when you MODIFY the record. If you ADD a new host, it will be available within a few minutes.

EXAMPLE:

HOST IP Address TTL
@ xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 1 Day
www xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 1 Day
mail xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 1 Day

Mail Exchanges (MX Records)

  1. To set up a new MX record, supply the host (usually the origin @), the mail exchange (which must be a valid A record) to which the mail will be directed, a preference and a TTL setting.
  2. The preference tells the zone what order it should attempt to deliver. It delivers to the lowest preference first.

EXAMPLE:

HOST Mail Exchanger Preference TTL
@ mail.domain.com 5 1 Day

CNAME

  1. A CNAME is an alias.
  2. To set up a CNAME, simply supply the host, the canonical name and the TTL setting. A canonical name is the target to which the host will be aliased. For example, if I set up a CNAME for secure.abc.com ('secure' is the host) with a canonical name of www.gkg.net, anytime secure.abc.com is entered it will be aliased or redirected to www.gkg.net. (NOTE: CNAME records are not equivalent to URL Forwarding)

TXT records

  1. Zone information is available for public review by performing simple queries. When a zone record is queried, there is an optional space provided for TEXT. This space may be used to provide contact information or general information to the public. A Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record can also be set here to help prevent spammers from sending via your domain name.

Those are the basics for how DNS works, and how to set it up correctly using GKG's DNS Zone Hosting tools. There are of course hundreds of other possibilities and they can not all be explained here. However these examples above are the most common settings.

Back to top What is DNS?

DNS stands for Domain Name System. The DNS translates URL text addresses (such as gkg.net) into a numeric Internet address (such as 216.217.56.2).

Every website hosting provider is required to have at least 2 DNS servers, (up to 13 are possible) which direct traffic to the websites they host.

In order for a domain name to work properly, the Registry must know which DNS servers to query. DNS servers MUST be valid and registered with the registry before they can be used as DNS servers.

Back to top What is DNSSEC?

DNSSEC stands for DNS Security Extensions. These 'extensions' add keys and signatures to the current DNS (Domain Name System) protocol.

Basically, when your browser searches the Internet to find websites, the requests will be verified by a series of signatures. This means if hackers attempt to redirect you to a fake website to steal the information you enter in, the signature of their websites will not match the sites you have requested and will therefore be ignored. You will be directed correctly to the sites you wish to visit and not have to worry that you may be navigating to a fraudulent copy created by a thief.

Back to top What is DNS Zone Hosting and how does it work?

DNS Zone Hosting at GKG.NET currently supports the following DNS record types:

Back to top
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