Primary and secondary name servers : Do they have to be hosted in same company

backupdomain-name-systemnameserver

I have my domain hosted and I received to two name servers to be updated with my domain registrar ns1.hostingcompany.com ns2.hostingcompany.com , I know if the primary name server goes down DNS server automatically point my domain to the secondary name server but my question is what happens my host's whole system goes down? Since ns1 and ns2 are belong to the same company would my domain resolve to anything ? or can I have ns2 in a different server with a different company? if so how do I configure the ns2 backend ? Thank you

Best Answer

The answer to the main question is "no, they don't". Your two (or, indeed, more) nameservers can (and probably should) be hosted with separate companies, in separate datacentres, preferably served by different network providers.

How you set up your 2ary nameserver is slightly beyond the scope of an SF answer - it depends on what resolver you're running, or if you're going with a name service provider, what interface they provide. But not only is there no bar on hosting the two nameservers far apart from each other, it is best practice to do so.

Related Solutions

Dns and custom name servers not updating

DNS data is cached in servers around the world. Checking your servers for changes is likely to mislead you as to whether a change has been made or not.

Looking at your data from here shows that your changes have been made. It looks like your TTL (Time To Live) is about four hours so your changes should be visible to you as well.

When making major changes it is best to make changes in a manner that uses the old and new addresses for a transitional period. One approach would be to publish both the old and new ip addresses at least on TTL period. Then when the transition occurs DNS will have the new addresses to use. Once the transition is done the old IP addresses can be removed.

It is common to change the TTL to a low value prior to the change so that cached data will be refreshed quickly. Scaling down the TTL over a period of time can be used limit the period when most requests are handled by your listed name servers.

EDIT: You can check what various name servers have in their cache with the nslookup or host (newer Linux/Unix distributions) command. You could try google (8.8.4.4 or 8.8.8.8) or OpenDNS (208.67.220.220 or 208.67.222.222) to see what some major caches have. The command for one of the name servers listed above is:

nslookup  ns1.vertigo.bm 8.8.8.8

The timetable I use for scaling down TTL is to reduce it by half whenever the time until the change is twice the current TTL. Keep the TTL at least five or ten minutes. Add the new addresses to the active nameservers 10 to 20 minutes in advance of the change. Remove the old entries after the change has been accomplished.

Can CNAMEs be used to point to Name Servers

You can not use in NS hostnames, which are CNAMEd lately on route (can't recall RFC-number, but it's prohibited on this level)

Both are shared hosting environments, so I don't think I can use A records

But you can do it:

>nslookup www.lazybadger.net

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    www.lazybadger.ru
Address:  188.120.246.161
Aliases:  www.lazybadger.net

net cnamed to ru, ru have A

Instead of using such strange DNS-hoster, why not use any independent reliably 3-rd party solution without idiotic limitation? I, personally, have my sites on two different hosters and manage zones independently without any headache

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Dns and custom name servers not updating

Can CNAMEs be used to point to Name Servers

Related Topic