TXT and CNAME DNS Records Resolution

To ensure you are a credible sender, you must go through setting up email authentication. Several protocols like SPF, DKIM, DMARC and others verify that you are the valid owner of the domain name you are using to send emails. We wrote a guide on email authentication for our MailWizz hosting titled ‘Configure email authentication - MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC’. Next, you need to add those TXT records and a CNAME record for tracking. Your domain might not be resolving to these newly added records despite adding. This doc is to help explain the jargon and why it is still not resolving despite adding correct DNS records.

Short answer: - It takes at least 24-72 hours for the world to acknowledge any changes to the records you made. They often call it DNS record propagation time. Usually, it takes much quicker than this, but there are certain times it could take as long as 72 hours to see these changes reflected across the world wide web.

TXT Records

DNS ’text’ record lets you place text into the domain name system (DNS). Initially, it was intended to be in human-readable format, but now it’s possible to put machine-readable data into a TXT record. It proves you are the valid owner of a specific domain name. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all use this as the record type, and it helps email servers or validators verify the ownership quickly.

CNAME Records

CNAME (canonical name) record acts as an alias to another domain. CNAME records only accept another domain and never an IP. They eventually resolve to an IP but never get IP as its value. CNAME works by determining the alias to an A record that contains IP information. After passing the request to an IP, the webserver takes over. A quick advantage of using CNAME instead of an A record is accommodating changes as IPs change, but names can stay the same.

DNS propagation is the time frame it takes for domain name system changes to update worldwide - all over the internet. It could take as long as 72 hours because DNS is part of a global chain where DNS servers everywhere need to get this updated value. However, there are a few ways to reduce the propagation times by changing the time to live (TTL) settings, internet service provider (ISP), and domain name registry. Usually, if you set the TTL to minimal, the records tend to change faster, but it also means they need to query to get updated values every so often, increasing the delay per request. It’s a compromise, but we won’t delve into details here. You can find more information on Google.