Glossary · ENCheck a domain

Nameserver

A nameserver is a server that answers questions about names in the Domain Name System (DNS). In a domain lookup, the term usually means an authoritative nameserver: a server that holds or serves the DNS records for a zone, a part of DNS managed together. These include the records that direct a website name to an IP address or identify where email should go.

What does a nameserver do for a domain?

When someone looks up a name such as shop.example.com, DNS resolution follows a chain of directions until it reaches an authoritative server for the relevant zone. That server can answer with records from the zone it serves. A domain's delegation is the information that tells DNS which authoritative nameservers to ask. A DNS record of type NS names those servers in DNS data.

For example, a shop owner enters ns1.dns-provider.example and ns2.dns-provider.example as the nameservers for example.com through the registrar. This tells the parent part of the DNS hierarchy where to send queries for the domain. The owner must also configure the zone data at the DNS provider; changing the nameserver list alone does not create the website's address or mail records.

Is a nameserver the same as an NS record?

No. A nameserver is the server that answers DNS questions. An NS record is a DNS record that names a nameserver for a zone. The NS record contains a hostname, not the full database or the website itself. A nameserver can serve many domains, and one domain can use multiple authoritative nameservers for reliability.

Nameserver or DNS resolver?

The word “DNS server” can refer to different roles. An authoritative nameserver answers from the zone data it serves. A recursive resolver works for a user's device: it asks other DNS servers as needed, follows their answers, and may save the result temporarily. Some software can perform both roles, but the roles are different.

If a domain's nameserver delegation points to the wrong provider, the DNS answers used by visitors may not match the records the owner edited elsewhere. If the delegation is correct but a record is wrong, queries can still return the wrong destination. Checking both the delegation and the zone's records helps distinguish these situations.

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