Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1035 - 4.1. Format
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4.1. Format

All communications inside of the domain protocol are carried in a single format called a message. The top level format of message is divided into 5 sections (some of which are empty in certain cases) shown below:

    +---------------------+
    |        Header       |
    +---------------------+
    |       Question      | the question for the name server
    +---------------------+
    |        Answer       | RRs answering the question
    +---------------------+
    |      Authority      | RRs pointing toward an authority
    +---------------------+
    |      Additional     | RRs holding additional information
    +---------------------+

The header section is always present. The header includes fields that specify which of the remaining sections are present, and also specify whether the message is a query or a response, a standard query or some other opcode, etc.

The names of the sections after the header are derived from their use in standard queries. The question section contains fields that describe a question to a name server. These fields are a query type (QTYPE), a query class (QCLASS), and a query domain name (QNAME). The last three sections have the same format: a possibly empty list of concatenated resource records (RRs). The answer section contains RRs that answer the question; the authority section contains RRs that point toward an authoritative name server; the additional records section contains RRs which relate to the query, but are not strictly answers for the question.


Next: 4.1.1. Header section format

Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1035 - 4.1. Format