What Is SRV Record?

Why It Matters

While A records and CNAME records tell browsers where to find a website, SRV records tell specific applications where to find their services. An SRV record says: “The XMPP messaging service for this domain runs on server chat.example.com, port 5222.”

For domain forwarding, SRV records are irrelevant — they handle different kinds of traffic. But it’s useful to know they exist so you don’t accidentally change them when updating DNS for forwarding.

How It Works

An SRV record has a specific format:

_service._protocol.example.com  SRV  priority weight port target
_xmpp._tcp.example.com         SRV  10 5 5222 chat.example.com
_sip._udp.example.com          SRV  10 5 5060 sip.example.com

Applications query the SRV record to discover which server handles a specific service for the domain.

SRV vs Other Record Types

Record Type	What It Resolves	Includes Port?
A	Domain → IP address	No
CNAME	Domain → another domain	No
MX	Domain → email server	No (uses standard port 25)
SRV	Service → server + port	Yes

How Domain Forward Handles This

SRV records are completely separate from web traffic forwarding. When you configure Domain Forward, you change A records and CNAME records. Your SRV records for Microsoft 365, VoIP, or other services remain untouched.