This report details the names and locations of all DNS servers on the internet, as well as the number of domains that are serviced by these servers. In this fashion, we can discover

• the number of sites hosted by ISPs
• the number of sites hosted by hosting companies that use an ISP's facilities, but run their own name servers
• the number of sites hosted by specialty DNS service providers
• the organizations that choose to operate their own DNS servers rather than to use those of their ISP/hosting provider.

The survey works by determining each month the authoritative name server for each host (and more accurately, each domain) in our survey. We then count the number of domains hosted on each DNS server.

Search

Curious about the size of a the domain set handled by a particular ISP's name servers? Try searching for the ISP's name server. For example, to find Exodus' name servers, try exodus.

Top 20 by Host Name

The top 20 name servers ranked according to the number of domains handled by each name server, with a name server uniquely identified by its fully qualifed name, are shown below.

Name Server Name	Name Server IP	Domains
ns.buydomains.com	208.254.3.177	116,217
this-domain-for-sale.com	128.121.3.72	116,209
dns1.name-services.com	63.251.163.102	100,637
dns2.name-services.com	216.52.184.230	100,636
dns3.name-services.com	63.251.83.36	100,604
dns4.name-services.com	64.74.96.242	100,555
dns5.name-services.com	212.118.243.100	100,126
ns1.directnic.com	206.251.177.2	53,923
ns0.directnic.com	204.251.10.100	53,790
a.ns.interland.net	64.226.28.33	50,093
b.ns.interland.net	69.0.145.33	50,067
c.ns.interland.net	64.77.127.42	49,749
ns9.san.yahoo.com	216.109.116.20	49,551
ns8.san.yahoo.com	66.218.71.205	49,551
yns1.yahoo.com	66.218.71.205	47,191
yns2.yahoo.com	216.109.116.20	47,189
ns.schlund.de	195.20.224.97	47,173
ns2.ultsearch.com	212.100.230.160	46,980
ns1.ultsearch.com	213.130.63.232	46,980
ns1.secure.net	192.220.124.10	43,896

Survey Limitations

Our survey, while having an impressive 15,058,431 sites and 8,558,376 domains in the data set, does not include all web sites and domains. We only include those that we consider active, which, by our definition, means we found the site via a link from somewhere else. Sites not linked by anyone are by definition not included in the survey.

We also actively drop sites out of the survey that fail to respond 3 consecutive months to our HTTP queries. So, while a DNS server might still respond with information for a domain, if there is no active web site that we can reach for the domain in question, then the domain is not included in this survey at all, even if it still has other functioning services (such as email).