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