Basic DNS query
dig example.com
Query A record
dig example.com A
Query MX record
dig example.com MX
Query NS record
dig example.com NS
Query TXT record
dig example.com TXT
Query AAAA record (IPv6)
dig example.com AAAA
Query CNAME record
dig www.example.com CNAME
Query SOA record
dig example.com SOA
Query ANY record
dig example.com ANY
Short answer only
dig example.com +short
Use specific DNS server
dig @8.8.8.8 example.com
Use specific DNS server (Cloudflare)
dig @1.1.1.1 example.com
Reverse DNS lookup
dig -x 8.8.8.8
Trace DNS path
dig example.com +trace
No recursion
dig example.com +norecurse
Show query time
dig example.com +stats
TCP instead of UDP
dig example.com +tcp
Query on specific port
dig @dns-server -p 5353 example.com
Multiple queries
dig example.com A example.com MX
Batch queries from file
dig -f domains.txt
Set timeout
dig example.com +time=5
Set retry attempts
dig example.com +tries=3
Show all sections
dig example.com +all
Show only answer section
dig example.com +noall +answer
Show question and answer
dig example.com +noall +question +answer
Disable comments
dig example.com +nocomments
Disable statistics
dig example.com +nostats
Clean output
dig example.com +noall +answer +short
Check DNSSEC
dig example.com +dnssec
DNSSEC validation
dig example.com +dnssec +multi
Query root servers
dig . NS
Query specific domain at root
dig @a.root-servers.net com NS
Subnet client (EDNS)
dig example.com +subnet=1.2.3.4/24
Buffer size
dig example.com +bufsize=4096
IPv4 only
dig -4 example.com
IPv6 only
dig -6 example.com
Compare with different DNS
# Google DNS
dig @8.8.8.8 example.com +short
# Cloudflare
dig @1.1.1.1 example.com +short
# Quad9
dig @9.9.9.9 example.com +short
Check propagation
for ns in $(dig example.com NS +short); do
echo "Checking $ns"
dig @$ns example.com A +short
done
Test zone transfer (AXFR)
dig @ns1.example.com example.com AXFR
Query CAA record
dig example.com CAA
Query SRV record
dig _service._proto.example.com SRV
Measure query time
time dig example.com
Continuous monitoring
watch -n 5 'dig example.com +short'
Common public DNS servers
8.8.8.8 # Google
8.8.4.4 # Google
1.1.1.1 # Cloudflare
1.0.0.1 # Cloudflare
9.9.9.9 # Quad9
208.67.222.222 # OpenDNS
208.67.220.220 # OpenDNS