What Is Authoritative Name Server?

An authoritative name server provides actual answer to your DNS queries such as – mail server IP address or web site IP address (A resource record). It provides original and definitive answers to DNS queries. It does not provides just cached answers that were obtained from another name server. Therefore it only returns answers to queries about domain names that are installed in its configuration system. There are two types of Authoritative Name Servers:

Master server (primary name server) – A master server stores the original master copies of all zone records. A hostmaster only make changes to master server zone records. Each slave server gets updates via special automatic updating mechanism of the DNS protocol. All slave servers maintain an identical copy of the master records.Slave server (secondary name server) – A slave server is exact replica of master server. It is used to share DNS server load and to improve DNS zone availability in case master server fails. It is recommend that you should at least have 2 slave servers and one master server for each domain name.

How Do I View Authoritative Name Server Names and IP Address?

The multiple name servers make sure that the domain still functional even if one name server becomes inaccessible or inoperable due to security or overloading issues. On the internet each domain name assigned a set of authoritative name servers. You can find out authoritative name servers by typing the following command at shell prompt (works with UNIX / Linux and Mac OS X):

host -t ns dnsknowledge.com

Sample Outputs:

dnsknowledge.com name server ns2.nixcraft.net. dnsknowledge.com name server ns3.nixcraft.net. dnsknowledge.com name server ns1.nixcraft.net.

You can also use nslookup command under MS-Windows or UNIX like operating systems. Type the command:

nslookup

Now set query type to ns at > prompt:

> set query=ns

Now enter domain name such as google.com or dnsknowledge.com:

> dnsknowledge.com

Sample Outputs:

Server: 127.0.0.1 Address: 127.0.0.1#53 Non-authoritative answer: dnsknowledge.com nameserver = ns3.nixcraft.net. dnsknowledge.com nameserver = ns2.nixcraft.net. dnsknowledge.com nameserver = ns1.nixcraft.net. Authoritative answers can be found from: ns1.nixcraft.net internet address = 208.43.138.52 ns2.nixcraft.net internet address = 75.126.168.152 ns3.nixcraft.net internet address = 208.43.78.162 >

How Do I Register Authoritative Name Server?

First, you need to register a domain name with your domain name registrar.Each domain name registrar allows you to set a primary name server (master server) and at least one secondary name server (slave server).

For example, DNSKnowledge.com domain name is registered with GoDaddy domain name registrar. GoDaddy (or any other domain name registrar) allows you to change the DNS authoritative name server at the time of registration or later any time.