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
dns2.name-services.com	216.52.184.230	118,499
dns1.name-services.com	69.25.142.1	118,498
dns3.name-services.com	63.251.83.36	118,495
dns4.name-services.com	64.74.96.242	118,490
dns5.name-services.com	212.118.243.118	118,489
yns1.yahoo.com	66.218.71.205	75,549
yns2.yahoo.com	216.109.116.20	75,548
ns8.san.yahoo.com	66.218.71.205	74,766
ns9.san.yahoo.com	216.109.116.20	74,765
ns1.ipowerweb.net	64.70.61.130	63,105
ns.schlund.de	195.20.224.97	62,164
ns2.ipowerweb.net	66.235.217.200	60,330
dns2.technorail.com	62.149.132.2	59,706
dns.technorail.com	62.149.128.2	59,705
ns1.livedns.co.uk	213.171.192.250	56,850
ns2.livedns.co.uk	213.171.193.250	56,848
ns1.ipowerdns.com	66.235.217.202	54,049
ns2.schlund.de	212.227.123.3	53,574
ns1.directnic.com	206.251.177.2	51,823
ns.xinnet.cn	202.106.124.195	51,815

Survey Limitations

Our survey, while having an impressive 16,653,797 sites and 10,494,591 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).