Stupid external DNS question

[Kathleen]

Does the name/IP of your external dns server need to be registered somewhere?

[Christopher Caldwell · Accepted solution]

No. If you have a caching only name server, the name server doesn't need to be registered anywhere on the public Internet.

If you are primary name server for certain domains, you're server(s) will be registered with the corresponding registrar (e.g. Network Solutions).

You used to have to fill out a form to get a host registered. Now, you can "add the host" in line during the registration process.

[S.K. Chan]

Only if you want it to be made available to others outside your zone. We register some of ours with ARIN (http://www.arin.net).

[Steven E. Protter]

The server does not need to be named if you are only resolving names for your local network, ie resolving yahoo.com for users inside your network.

If however, you are running a web or mail server that accepts requests from the public Internet, it is required that the DNS server be registered with the domain record.

That lets the rest of the Internet know where to find the DNS server for your domain.

So, in summary if it services a domain, yes, otherwise no.

Note: The only stupid question is the one that's not asked. It was a very good question.

SEP

[Wilfred Chau_1]

Yes you do. You have to register the DNS nameservers before you can use it for your zone.

network solutions is a good place to start.

[Bill Hassell]

nslookup will complain if your nameserver can't resolve it's own address. This is a security measure but amazingly, many nameservers don't know their own names. A workaround is to use files then dns in nsswitch.conf, then put the IP addresses for all the nameservers in resolv.conf in /etc/hosts and give them some sort of name. nslookup will be much happier.