DNS and Nameservers

[jaspen]

Okay, I have looked in the manual and did not find anything to help me on this. I need to create two nameservers ns1. and ns2. I need them to point to my VPS. I have one shared ip address. Isn't this dangerous to only have one IP address. Do I add more and make them exlclusive. How to I know that they are the two or one that is bound to the main dns for the VPS.

Confused and needing direction.

 

[jwdick]

You create ( register the name servers ) the NS1 and NS2 at the registrar where you have the domain name registered. If you do not know how to do this, check with their tech support as most registrars have different ways this is accomplished.


Idealy, you should have two ips and two different servers for ns1 and ns2. This is for redundancy in case one server ns server is down. Realisticaly, if you only have one server hosting the websites, it won't make any difference if you have separate "ns" points because all of your sites would be down anyway.

 

[thetoddster]

Register ns1 . . .

Do you mean actually register ns1.domain.com and ns2 .. . . . . or do you mean, access your registars control panel and replace the old name servers with the new name servers.

Thx. in advance

 

[jwdick]

As I said, I do not know the terminology that your registrar uses, by GoDaddy calls it "Domain Hosts".

Example: you have "yourdomain.com" registered. Now you would go to the "domain hosts summary" file, and enter the following:


Host Name 1: ns1.yourdomain.com Host IP 1: xx.xx.xx.xx
Host Name 2: ns2.yourdomain.com Host IP 2: xx.xx.xx.xx

The IP address would be the ip address of your DNS server. The NS1 and NS2 can be anything that you want to call it, most use the ns designation for NameServer.

I know it sounds confusing but I really do not know of a better way of explaining. Ask your registrar's tech support for help in registering your NameServes.

 

[faris]

Re: Register ns1 . . .

Originally posted by thetoddster
Do you mean actually register ns1.domain.com and ns2 .. . . . . or do you mean, access your registars control panel and replace the old name servers with the new name servers.

Thx. in advance

Neither of the above really.

In your registrar's control panel for your domain name there will be an option to create nameservers based on your domain. This is not the same as fiddling with DNS settings (i.e. if you are in the place where you can create A records, MX records and CNAME records for your domain you are probably in the wrong place) and this is not the same as changing the nameservers associated with your domain (i.e. if you are in a place where it already says ns1.something.com and ns2.something.com) you are probably in the wrong place.

As jwdick says, the exact terminology differs from registrar to registrar. Create nameserver hosts records or similar words seems to be quite common though. You will be asked to enter something.yourdomain.com and an associated IP address in order to do this. It doesn't matter what something is. it can be "bah" for your first nameserver and "humbug" for the second. It doesn't have to be ns1 and ns2 or whatever.

If you can't find it, contact your registrar's support department and explain that you want to create a pair of nameserver host records - ns1.yourdomain.com and ns2.yourdomain.com with IPs of xxxx and yyyy **so that you can use your domain name to run your own DNS servers** - and ask them how you do this. If you are unlucky and get a drone answering you they may not know what you are talking about. After all, creating host records is not something the average punter would want to do. But by mentioning the key words "run your own DNS server" and "create nameserver host records" you should be OK. Watch out though -- they may still misunderstand and try to point you to wards altering the DNS settings for the domain (A records etc) or altering the nameservers associated with the domain.



Faris.