HI,
It will be a Host A record to IP address (ip of the interace listening on the sharepoint server).
As the book states. The entry in the sharepoint sections will only work when it is implemented in the DNS. So for
http://start (internal dns need to have a host entry called start with ip address of the sharepoint server). External dns entry for your traffic to come through to the sharepoint server to process.
I hope above clarifies some issues.
Regards,
Nasir