शब्दकोश · DNS

Nameserver (Authoritative DNS Server)

A nameserver is a DNS server that holds the official records for a domain and answers queries about it from resolvers around the world.

अपडेट: अक्टूबर 5, 2026

A nameserver is a server that answers DNS queries. In website context the term usually means an authoritative nameserver, one that holds the actual records for your zone, as opposed to a recursive resolver that looks answers up for users.

Why it matters

Your nameservers are the single source of truth for every record on the domain. They are normally run by your DNS host, which may be your registrar, a cloud provider or a service such as Cloudflare. If they are down or slow, resolvers cannot refresh expired records, and the site and email vanish even though the servers behind them are healthy. Using two or more nameservers across separate networks (often with anycast) provides redundancy.

Example

$ dig +short NS example.com
ana.ns.cloudflare.com.
bob.ns.cloudflare.com.

$ dig @ana.ns.cloudflare.com example.com A +norecurse

The second command asks that nameserver directly, bypassing caches, which shows what is truly published.

Common mistakes

  • Changing the nameservers at the registrar before recreating all records at the new host, including MX and TXT.
  • Leaving DNSSEC DS records at the registrar after leaving a signing provider, which causes resolution failures.
  • Editing records at the old DNS host after the delegation moved. Only the delegated host matters.
  • Using two nameservers that are really the same machine or network.

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