Which command would you use to diagnose DNS issues?

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Multiple Choice

Which command would you use to diagnose DNS issues?

When diagnosing DNS issues, you want a tool that directly queries DNS servers to see how domain names are resolved. nslookup is built for that purpose: it lets you query DNS servers for the IP address of a domain and inspect different DNS record types (A, AAAA, MX, NS, etc.). If you run nslookup and the domain resolves to the expected IP, DNS is functioning for that name; if you see errors like NXDOMAIN or SERVFAIL, the problem is with DNS resolution rather than general connectivity. The other tools serve different roles: ping checks basic reachability to a host but doesn’t diagnose DNS configuration, traceroute shows the path packets take to a host but not DNS results, and ARP resolves MAC addresses on the local network, not domain name resolution.

When diagnosing DNS issues, you want a tool that directly queries DNS servers to see how domain names are resolved. nslookup is built for that purpose: it lets you query DNS servers for the IP address of a domain and inspect different DNS record types (A, AAAA, MX, NS, etc.). If you run nslookup and the domain resolves to the expected IP, DNS is functioning for that name; if you see errors like NXDOMAIN or SERVFAIL, the problem is with DNS resolution rather than general connectivity. The other tools serve different roles: ping checks basic reachability to a host but doesn’t diagnose DNS configuration, traceroute shows the path packets take to a host but not DNS results, and ARP resolves MAC addresses on the local network, not domain name resolution.

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