Stuck with Cloudflare error 1016? We can help you.

Cloudflare error 1016 occurs when Cloudflare is unable to send requests to the server because its origin IP cannot resolve the A or CNAME DNS record requested.

Here at Bobcares, we often get requests from our customers to fix similar errors as a part of our Server Management Services.

Today let’s see how our Support Engineers fix this error for our customers.

How to fix Cloudflare error 1016?

Sometimes the record to be specified in the DNS tab of the Cloudflare dashboard is not found or it is a CNAME record to an external domain that does not resolve.

This will cause the browser to show a 1016 error. A typical error looks as shown below:

Generally, this can happen if the host had an IP address change or the server is down/offline.

Before going into the steps for fixing this error we will see some of the causes.

Causes for Cloudflare error 1016

1. The Cloudflare DNS configuration does not have an A DNS record that matches the origin IP address.
2. A CNAME record in Cloudflare DNS points to an external domain that cannot be resolved.
3. The origin hostnames (CNAMEs) in Cloudflare Load Balancer default, region, and fallback pools are unresolvable.

Methods to fix this error:

Some of the methods that our Support techs follow to fix this error are given below:

1. First we need to verify that Cloudflare DNS settings include an A record that points to a valid IP address. We can modify the existing A record or create a new one.
2. If the CNAME record is pointing to an external domain, we need to ensure that the target domain can be resolved by using command-line tools as well as third-party tools to check DNS resolution.

The following are two command-line tools:

dig

dig subdomain.example.com

dig +trace subdomain.example.com

The +trace option outputs detailed information when the DNS response fails.

dig subdomain.example.com @1.1.1.1

The @1.1.1.1 option returns results from Cloudflare’s public DNS resolver.

This allows us to confirm that public resolvers can receive a DNS response.

nslookup

nslookup subdomain.example.com 47
nslookup subdomain.example.com 47 1.1.1.1

[Still, facing this error? We are happy to help you!]

Conclusion

To conclude we saw what are the common causes for Cloudflare error 1016 and the steps that our Support Engineers follow to fix them.