TOOL / NETWORKING
DNS Desk.
Public DNS, clearly. Check where a name points, find its mail servers, or inspect the text records behind a domain.
Ready for a lookup.
- Response
- DNSSEC
- Request time
| Name | Type | Value | TTL |
|---|
READING THE ANSWER
A useful snapshot. Not the whole network.
Start with the right record
A and AAAA return IP addresses. MX lists mail servers; TXT often holds verification or email policy text. NS lists nameservers. CNAME follows an alias; an A lookup may also return that alias chain.
TTL is a cache timer
The time to live tells a resolver how long it can cache an answer. The value here is the remaining lifetime at this resolver, not a countdown until every DNS provider sees a change.
What do NOERROR, NXDOMAIN, and SERVFAIL mean?
NOERROR means the resolver completed the query, even if the requested record type has no answer. NXDOMAIN means the queried name does not exist in DNS. SERVFAIL means the resolver could not complete the query; DNSSEC validation problems, unreachable nameservers, or other issues can cause it.
What does the DNSSEC result tell me?
“Authenticated by resolver” reflects the resolver’s AD flag: it reports that it validated the answer. “Not authenticated” is not proof that a site is unsafe; the domain may be unsigned. This tool does not independently validate signatures or check a website’s TLS certificate.
Scope and how this was built
I built DNS Desk as a practical companion to Subnet Desk. It uses Cloudflare’s DNS-over-HTTPS JSON interface and renders the returned records directly. AI helped with the implementation and tests; it does not generate the lookup results.
This is one recursive resolver’s view of public DNS. It cannot see internal DNS, confirm global propagation, or prove that a website or mail server is working. Request time includes the HTTPS round trip, so it is not a DNS benchmark.