What is a HINFO record?
HINFO records allow you to define the hardware type and Operating System (OS) in use at a host. This information can be used by application protocols such as FTP, which uses special procedures when communicating with computers of a known CPU and OS type. For security reasons, these records are rarely used on public servers.
HINFO record format
A typical HINFO record looks like the following in standard BIND format:
$ORIGIN example.com. testhinfo 90 IN HINFO "INTEL-386" "Windows"An anatomy of the HINFO Record looks like the below:
|Name||TTL||Record Class||Record Type||CPU||Operating System|
It defines the hostname of a record and whether the hostname will be appended to the label. Fully qualified hostnames terminated by a period will not append the origin.
The time-to-live in seconds. It specifies how long a resolver is supposed to cache or remember the DNS query before the query expires and a new one needs to be done.
Mainly 3 classes of DNS records exist:
- IN (Internet) – default and generally what internet uses.
- CH (Chaosnet) – used for querying DNS server versions.
- HS (Hesiod) – uses DNS functionality to provide access to databases of information that change infrequently.
The record format is defined using this field. Common record types are A, AAAA, CNAME, CAA, TXT etc. In the case of a HINFO record, the record type is HINFO.
A description of basic system hardware. Identifiable name of the CPU of the host.
Name of the Operating System (OS) of the host.
How to add a HINFO record?
For instructions on how to add an MX record with us, you may refer to the tutorial here.
HINFO record glossary
FTP is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol, which is a standard Internet protocol to transfer files between computers on a network over TCP/IP connections.
Berkeley Internet Name Daemon - is the most commonly used DNS software on the Internet and Dynu observes BIND format.
The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is it is one of the main components of a server that performs calculations, actions, and runs programs.
Operating System (OS)
An operating system or OS is a software program that enables the computer hardware to communicate and operate with the computer software. It controls the operation of a computer and directs the processing of programs. Some of the common OSs are Windows, Linux, Mac OS etc.