Find authoritative Name Servers for any domain. Identify DNS providers, check nameserver configuration and TTL values.
🗄️ What Are NS Records?
Name Server (NS) records delegate a DNS zone to a set of authoritative nameservers. When a recursive resolver looks up example.com, it first queries the .com TLD servers which respond with the NS records pointing to the authoritative nameservers for that domain.
🌐 Authoritative DNS
The nameservers listed in NS records hold the definitive DNS zone data for a domain — A, AAAA, MX, TXT, CNAME records, and more.
⏱️ TTL & Propagation
Changing NS records takes 24–48 hours to propagate globally because old nameserver data is cached by recursive resolvers until TTL expires.
🔒 DNSSEC
NS records are included in DNSSEC chain-of-trust. The parent zone signs a DS record that corresponds to the KSK at the child zone's nameservers.
🔄 Redundancy
Domains should have at least two NS records on geographically and topologically separate servers to survive nameserver outages.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
Why do I have multiple NS records?
Multiple nameservers provide redundancy. If one goes offline, DNS resolution continues using the others. Most registrars require at least two.
What is a "lame delegation"?
A lame delegation occurs when the NS records point to a server that is not actually configured to answer authoritatively for the domain. This causes DNS resolution failures.