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
dns1.name-services.com	69.25.142.1	221,372
dns2.name-services.com	216.52.184.230	221,363
dns3.name-services.com	63.251.92.193	220,930
dns4.name-services.com	64.74.96.225	220,839
dns5.name-services.com	70.42.37.1	219,120
yns1.yahoo.com	66.218.71.205	140,011
yns2.yahoo.com	216.109.116.20	139,999
dns.technorail.com	62.149.128.2	128,270
dns2.technorail.com	62.149.132.2	128,227
ns1.dreamhost.com	66.33.206.206	119,194
ns2.dreamhost.com	208.96.10.221	119,135
ns8.san.yahoo.com	66.218.71.205	114,305
ns9.san.yahoo.com	216.109.116.20	114,303
ns3.dreamhost.com	66.33.216.216	108,664
ns.xinnetdns.com	210.51.170.66	92,175
ns.xinnet.cn	210.51.171.209	91,950
ns1.ipowerweb.net	64.70.61.130	84,291
wsc1.jomax.net	64.202.165.4	80,453
wsc2.jomax.net	208.109.80.57	80,447
ns2.livedns.co.uk	213.171.193.250	80,088

Survey Limitations

Our survey, while having an impressive 28,470,548 sites and 16,065,735 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).