What are Wild Card Records?
Wildcard records allow an administrator to point all non-existent records within a domain to a single target host. Any record not explicitly defined in the DNS will resolve to the target of the wild card record. It is important to note that a wild card record is not inclusive of the root record of the domain.
A wild card record can be defined as an A Record, AAAA Record, CNAME Record, and HTTP Redirection Record which has an * in the name field.
How to Configure Wild Card Records
1. In the sidebar menu click Managed DNS and then select Domains
2. Select the Domain Name.
3. Under the A records section, click the (+) icon to add a record.
Wildcard Record Fields
A) Name: This is the host name for the record, typically a computer or server within your domain. Your domain name is automatically appended to the end of the “Name” field. For example, if you create a record with the name “www” the record would be defined as “www.music.com”. If the “Name” field is left blank, then it represents the root record of the domain. The root record for the base domain can also be referred to as the apex record and is represented using an @ symbol in some documentation.
B) TTL: The TTL (Time to Live) in seconds is the length of time the record will cache in resolving name servers and web browsers. The longer the TTL, then remote systems will lookup the DNS record less frequently. Your name servers will also receive less query traffic since most queries are answered by resolving name servers. Conversely, the shorter the TTL the faster any changes you make to your DNS will propagate in servers that have cached data. However, your domain will receive more query traffic.
C) Record Mode: The Record Mode is how you enable settings like Failover, Record Pools, or Round Robin with Failover. You can read more about these settings here.
D) IP: The IPv6 address of your FQDN. An IP (Internet Protocol) address consists of a four octet 32-bit address.
E) Notes: Add a helpful note with keywords so you can search for your records later.
F) Save: Save your record changes and don’t forget to commit your changes after you’re done making record changes for this domain!
Recommended values: Records that are static and don’t change often should have TTL’s set between 1800 (being on the low end) to 86400 seconds (30 minutes to 1 day cache).
Records configured with Failover or that change often should have TTL’s set anywhere from 180 to 600 (3 to 10 minutes cache).
If a change is needed for a record with a high TTL, then the TTL can be lowered prior to making the change and then raised back up again after the changes were made.