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	117,417
dns4.name-services.com	64.74.96.242	117,410
dns5.name-services.com	212.118.243.118	117,404
dns2.name-services.com	216.52.184.230	117,387
dns1.name-services.com	69.25.142.1	117,385
yns1.yahoo.com	66.218.71.205	78,512
yns2.yahoo.com	216.109.116.20	78,512
ns8.san.yahoo.com	66.218.71.205	77,822
ns9.san.yahoo.com	216.109.116.20	77,821
ns1.ipowerweb.net	64.70.61.130	64,543
dns.technorail.com	62.149.128.2	62,243
dns2.technorail.com	62.149.132.2	62,238
ns2.ipowerweb.net	66.235.217.200	61,661
ns1.directnic.com	206.251.177.2	61,469
ns0.directnic.com	204.251.10.100	61,438
ns1.livedns.co.uk	213.171.192.250	58,459
ns2.livedns.co.uk	213.171.193.250	58,453
ns.xinnet.cn	202.106.124.195	56,654
ns.xinnetdns.com	210.51.170.66	56,631
ns1.ipowerdns.com	66.235.217.202	55,764

Survey Limitations

Our survey, while having an impressive 17,216,192 sites and 10,714,520 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).