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
dns3.name-services.com	63.251.83.36	153,860
dns4.name-services.com	64.74.96.242	153,843
dns1.name-services.com	63.251.163.102	153,827
dns2.name-services.com	216.52.184.230	153,824
dns5.name-services.com	212.118.243.118	153,691
ns1.directnic.com	206.251.177.2	139,682
ns0.directnic.com	204.251.10.100	139,613
ns.buydomains.com	208.254.3.177	138,465
this-domain-for-sale.com	128.121.3.72	138,001
yns1.yahoo.com	66.218.71.205	73,014
yns2.yahoo.com	216.109.116.20	73,012
ns8.san.yahoo.com	66.218.71.205	72,301
ns9.san.yahoo.com	216.109.116.20	72,300
ns1.fabulous.com	64.15.205.211	64,144
ns2.fabulous.com	64.15.205.212	64,144
ns.schlund.de	195.20.224.97	63,330
ns1.ipowerweb.net	64.70.61.130	60,720
ns2.ipowerweb.net	66.235.217.200	57,493
dns2.technorail.com	62.149.132.2	55,579
dns.technorail.com	62.149.128.2	55,579

Survey Limitations

Our survey, while having an impressive 24,787,718 sites and 11,128,761 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).