Sometimes you like to know some more what is behind a web-address or a domain-name. Then the linux command ‘dig’ can be helpful:
dig www.interstingwebsite.com soa
Example:
dig www.google.com soa
which gives:
]$ dig www.google.com
; <<>> DiG 9.8.2rc1-RedHat-9.8.2-0.10.rc1.el6_3.5 <<>> www.google.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 18148
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 6, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 4
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.google.com. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.google.com. 8 IN A 74.125.143.106
www.google.com. 8 IN A 74.125.143.147
www.google.com. 8 IN A 74.125.143.99
www.google.com. 8 IN A 74.125.143.103
www.google.com. 8 IN A 74.125.143.104
www.google.com. 8 IN A 74.125.143.105
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
google.com. 37733 IN NS ns3.google.com.
google.com. 37733 IN NS ns1.google.com.
google.com. 37733 IN NS ns2.google.com.
google.com. 37733 IN NS ns4.google.com.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.google.com. 133889 IN A 216.239.32.10
ns2.google.com. 133889 IN A 216.239.34.10
ns3.google.com. 133889 IN A 216.239.36.10
ns4.google.com. 133889 IN A 216.239.38.10
;; Query time: 1 msec
;; SERVER: 129.177.30.3#53(129.177.30.3)
;; WHEN: Fri Nov 30 23:48:01 2012
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 264