A Reverse DNS Lookup is the process of looking up the hostname assigned to a specific IP address.

This process is useful for finding out the domain name of that particular IP address. The domain name may be something like www.mwolk.com, or even www.google.com. An IP address will look something like 204.14.93.200.

How to perform a Reverse DNS Lookup

There are a few methods in performing a DNS Lookup. The first will involve how to using a simple Windows command prompt.

Windows

On the task bar, click Start -> Run
When the prompt comes up to type a command, type in “cmd” (without the quotes)
This will bring up your command prompt.
Once the prompt is up and ready to go, type in “nslookup <ip address>”
Ex.) nslookup 204.14.93.200
This will then display something like:

Name: <name of site>
Address: <IP address that you entered>

And that’s all there is to it for that method.

Another method in using reverse dns lookup is by using ZoneEdit.com’s NSLookup tool. This site can provide you with even more information than the native Window’s nslookup.

-How to use ZoneEdit’s NSLookup-

After navigating to the web page, look under the section entitled “Reverse Lookup”.
Under step number 1, it says to “Enter an IP address for Reverse Lookup: ”
In he field, type the IP address you’d like to reverse lookup.
You don’t need to worry about Step 2 and can skip straight to step 3.
For step 3, just click the “Look it up” button.

The alternative to a reverse DNS lookup is just a regular DNS lookup, also known as a forward lookup. This does just the inverse, and instead looks up the websites IP address based on the host name. This can be done just as easily.

How to for Windows

First, open up command prompt. (Start -> Run, type “cmd”)
While in an empty terminal window, try typing “ping” and then a website domain name. For this example lets try using mwolk.com.
Ex.) ping mwolk.com
Command prompt will then tell you that it is pinging mwolk.com [204.14.93.200] with 32 bytes of data.

The number next to mwolk.com (204.14.93.200) it it’s IP address. Congratulations on performing a basic DNS Lookup!

Another way of finding  websites IP is by again using ZoneEdit’s NSLookup.

Visit the site via the previous link, and under the DNS Lookup section in step one, enter the websites name (i.e. google.com). Skip straight to step 4, and press “Look it up”. You will then be greeted with the current IP address of the site. Easy as 1,2,3…4!

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