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	63.251.92.193	133,558
dns4.name-services.com	64.74.96.242	133,553
dns2.name-services.com	216.52.184.230	133,544
dns1.name-services.com	69.25.142.1	133,541
dns5.name-services.com	212.118.243.118	133,536
yns1.yahoo.com	66.218.71.205	86,792
yns2.yahoo.com	216.109.116.20	86,792
ns8.san.yahoo.com	66.218.71.205	85,503
ns9.san.yahoo.com	216.109.116.20	85,502
ns1.ipowerweb.net	64.70.61.130	68,202
dns2.technorail.com	62.149.132.2	68,030
dns.technorail.com	62.149.128.2	68,030
ns2.ipowerweb.net	66.235.217.200	65,659
ns.xinnet.cn	202.106.124.194	64,459
ns.xinnetdns.com	210.51.170.66	64,435
wsc2.jomax.net	64.202.167.50	62,650
wsc1.jomax.net	64.202.165.4	62,648
ns1.livedns.co.uk	213.171.192.250	62,494
ns2.livedns.co.uk	213.171.193.250	62,484
ns1.ipowerdns.com	66.235.217.202	59,763

Survey Limitations

Our survey, while having an impressive 18,150,057 sites and 11,233,800 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).