# A Record

An A Record — more accurately, a 'DNS A Record' — links a domain to an IP address.

Your A Record — the 'A' is short for 'address' — links your chosen domain to the IP address of the system that hosts that domain.

For example, if your domain and subdomain is `marketing.example.com`, and your dedicated IP address is `101.10.10.101`, then any attempt to access `marketing.example.com` — from a web browser, say, or by using `curl` at the command line — will be transparently routed to `101.10.10.101`. The browser will send a query to a DNS server, which uses the A Record to determine the target IP address. The DNS server returns this address to the browser, which uses it to request the web page.

The A Record is a file. It contains the domain, the target IP address, the record type, a TTL (Time to Live) value which indicates how long changes made to the record can be expected to take effect, and a subdomain value. This can be an actual subdomain — `marketing` in the example above — or a symbol: `*` to indicate all possible subdomains, or `@` to specify the root domain.

A Records only hold IPv4 addresses. If your website has an IPv6 address, it will instead use a AAAA Record.