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	123,685
this-domain-for-sale.com	128.121.3.72	123,592
dns1.name-services.com	63.251.163.102	116,757
dns3.name-services.com	63.251.83.36	116,755
dns2.name-services.com	216.52.184.230	116,755
dns4.name-services.com	64.74.96.242	116,706
dns5.name-services.com	212.118.243.118	116,030
ns1.directnic.com	206.251.177.2	94,890
ns0.directnic.com	204.251.10.100	94,770
ns9.san.yahoo.com	216.109.116.20	55,410
ns8.san.yahoo.com	66.218.71.205	55,410
yns1.yahoo.com	66.218.71.205	54,267
yns2.yahoo.com	216.109.116.20	54,266
ns.schlund.de	195.20.224.97	52,848
ns1.ultsearch.com	62.73.174.194	52,067
ns2.ultsearch.com	212.100.230.160	52,067
a.ns.interland.net	64.226.28.33	49,587
b.ns.interland.net	69.0.145.33	49,577
c.ns.interland.net	64.77.127.42	49,224
ns1.secure.net	192.220.124.10	46,437

Survey Limitations

Our survey, while having an impressive 16,312,903 sites and 9,299,024 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).