Which type of authoritative DNS zone maps host names to IP addresses?

• A. Forward Mapping
• B. Reverse Mapping
• C. External Primary
• D. Internal Primary

Answer: (A)

In DNS, there are forward and reverse lookups. A forward lookup zone maps a domain name to its IP address, using A records for IPv4 and AAAA records for IPv6. This is exactly how a client resolves a host name like example.com to an address it can connect to. Reverse lookups do the opposite, mapping an IP address back to a host name using PTR records. External Primary and Internal Primary describe zone roles rather than the direction of the mapping, so they don’t fit the question. Therefore, the type that maps host names to IP addresses is the forward mapping zone.