What is a name server?

In this article we'll explain what a name server is, and how name servers are used to direct the traffic of your website to a specific web server at a web host.

We'll also cover the difference between our own public name servers, vanity name servers, and custom name servers which allow you to run a name server from your own server.

Feel free to use the article contents navigation on the right to jump directly to a particular section in this article, to quickly get the specific information you need.

The terms name server, and nameserver are interchangeable and refer to the exact same thing. I wanted to point this out explicitly to avoid any confusion as you'll see it displayed both ways across the Internet.

What are name servers?

A name server is a specialized server on the Internet that handles queries or questions from your local computer, about the location of a domain name's various services.

A great simple way to think about name servers is using a phone book analogy. If you were trying to call InMotion Hosting you might have remembered our phone number, but more than likely you'd want to look it up before just guessing at numbers.

This same story is also true for the Internet and domain names. As an example you're reading this article right now on our InMotionHosting.com domain name.

But just how exactly did your computer know what webpage to display for you, and what server to pull it from?

Now if you wanted to, you could bookmark or copy down http://216.193.251.47 for anytime you'd like to come back to our website.

More than likely though, InMotionHosting.com is going to be much easier for you to remember, and this is why nameservers exist on the Internet.

What name servers am I using?

To check and see the name servers your domain name is currently set to use, you can either use our online routing tool to view this DNS information, or by using the Windows command prompt.

Check from our online tool

You can use our online routing tool to see what NS (Name Server) records are currently set for your domain name. Simply replace InMotionHosting.com with your own domain name, and click on submit.

Check from command prompt

1. In Windows click on Start, in the Search programs and files field type in cmd, then hit Enter.
2. With the command prompt opened, type in the following command and hit Enter
   
   nslookup
3. You should now be at the nslookup prompt indicated by >       

   Specify you'd just like to see NS (Name Server) records of the domain by typing in the following:

   set q=NS

   Hit Enter to be dropped to the next line, and here is where you'll type in your domain name:

   inmotionhosting.com

   For this example we used InMotionHosting.com and we get back our public name servers:

   ns.inmotionhosting.com internet address = 74.124.210.242 ns2.inmotionhosting.com internet address = 70.39.150.2

What are InMotion's name servers?

If you register your domain name through us, by default you'll be using our public name servers automatically. If you registered your domain name somewhere else and would like to have the domain hosted with us, you'll want to update your domain's name server records to point to our public name servers.

Here are InMotion Hosting's public name servers and IP addresses:

ns.inmotionhosting.com 74.124.210.242
ns2.inmotionhosting.com 70.39.150.2

Anytime you're making DNS changes, especially relating to changing your name servers it can take between 24-48 hours for those new settings to fully propagate out over the Internet.

Do I have to use these?

Setting your domain's name servers are basically just letting your domain Registrar know where to send DNS requests for your domain to. So technically it is not required that you use our public name servers in order to have your domain name hosted with us.

If you already have access to directly modify your DNS records for your domain, you can simply modify your DNS records so they directly point to the IP address of the server you're using with us.

So in our case from the earlier example with InMotionHosting.com we saw the IP address we were getting back from our public name servers was 216.193.251.47.

If we update the NS (Name Server) records for InMotionHosting.com to use ns1/2.MyCustomDomain.com instead of our public name servers. As long as we still have an A (Address) DNS record pointing to 216.193.251.47 on those name servers as well, the website would still be pulled from the same physical web server.

How do I update my name servers?

In order to update your domain name's name servers, this modification needs to be made at your domain Registrar where the domain name was registered at.

You can read our guide on updating your domain's name servers for more in-depth information on this process. It covers how you can update domain name servers registered through us from our AMP interface, and it also contains links to other popular domain Registrars, and the steps you'd take with them to update your name servers.

What are vanity name servers?

Vanity name servers allow you to still use our public name servers to resolve all of your domain's DNS requests. The main difference being that our public name servers will be masked or hidden to the general public behind your vanity name servers.

This is a great option if you're hosting a client of your own with our services, but you don't necessarily want your client to know that you're using us to provide that service.

Create vanity name servers

In order to create vanity nameservers, you'll need to create two A (address) DNS records pointed at our public nameserver IP addresses, for the domain name you'd like to use to mask our nameservers.

You can follow the steps below to get vanity name servers setup for your domain name:

1. Login to your cPanel.
2. Under the Domains section, click on Simple DNS Zone Editor.
3. Select your domain name from the Domaindrop-down.

   Under the Add an A Record section, fill in these values:

   Name: ns1

   Address: 74.124.210.242

   When clicking off of the Name field, it will convert to the format ns1.MyCustomDomain.com.

   Now click on Add a Record, you should see a success message of:

   Added Record ns1.MyCustomDomain.com. > 74.124.210.242

    

4. Still in the Simple DNS Zone Editor.

   Under the Add an A Record section, fill in these values:

   Name: ns2

   Address: 70.39.150.2

   When clicking off of the Name field, it will convert to the format ns2.MyCustomDomain.com.

   Now click on Add a Record, you should see a success message of:

   Added Record ns2.MyCustomDomain.com. > 70.39.150.2

    

5. After that, down under the User-Defined Recordssection you should now see:

   ns1.MyCustomDomain.com. A 74.124.210.242
   ns1.MyCustomDomain.com. A 70.39.150.2

6. Now you need to login to your current domain Registrar where you registered the domain name you're using for the vanity name servers.

   You need to let them know that you're trying to run name servers from your domain name. This typically involves going to a section in their control panel labeled something along the lines of maintain name servers under this domain, it can also be referred to as domain hosts, or glue records.

   Once you've registered your new vanity name servers with your domain Registrar, it can take 24-48 hours before they become fully active. After they've become active you can go ahead and point any of your other domains that you have hosted with us to these newly created vanity name servers, instead of our public name servers.

What are custom name servers?

Custom name servers allow you to run a name server from you own server, completely separate from our public name servers all together.

If you take root access on either your VPS or dedicated server, one of the requirments of having that access is getting custom name servers.

When you have custom name servers your server is no longer clustered to our public name servers, and as such you want to make sure that all of your domains are set to use your custom name servers.

If you have custom name servers setup, but you still have a domain pointed at our public name servers, any updates you make to your DNS records for that domain will not be seen by the public.

Create custom name servers

You should have already at this point been given custom name server entries by our system administration team, or you specifically requested for them to be setup. For this example we'll be using the fake domain name MyCustomDomain.com:

ns1.MyCustomDomain.com 123.123.123.123
ns2.MyCustomDomain.com 123.123.123.123

1. Login to your domain Registrar where you registered the MyCustomDomain.com domain name.
2. Most Registrars will have a section similar to Maintain name servers under this domain, or it's sometime referred to as glue, or host records as well.
3. Typically you'll just need to enter in the part before your domain name ns1 for instance, and then the IP address you were given for the custom name server.
4. Repeat the same step again for the ns2 host as well.

After making DNS changes like this, it can take a full 24-48 hours for the settings to fully update. Once they have updated, you should be able to query your domain's name server records again, and it should come back with the custom name server settings as the active name server addresses for that domain.

You can use the online Whois tool from InterNIC to see if your custom name servers have been properly registered and propagated yet. You would simply want to select Nameserver as the type of lookup, then in our case we'd type in ns1.MyCustomDomain.com and click on Submit.

If it has been successful, then you should see the IP address that you registered for the custom name server entry. If it hasn't been successful yet, you would just see a message of No match for nameserver "ns1.MyCustomDomain.com".

You'll want to make sure to update all of your domains to use your custom name servers once they have been configured. That way any DNS edits that you make on your server will be seen by the outside world.