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	98.124.192.1	401,681
dns2.name-services.com	98.124.197.1	401,680
dns3.name-services.com	98.124.193.1	401,621
dns4.name-services.com	69.64.145.225	401,372
dns5.name-services.com	98.124.196.1	399,828
ns1.dreamhost.com	66.33.206.206	298,980
ns2.dreamhost.com	208.96.10.221	298,933
ns3.dreamhost.com	66.33.216.216	298,854
dns2.technorail.com	62.149.132.2	233,179
dns.technorail.com	62.149.128.2	233,178
ns1.bluehost.com	74.220.195.31	226,759
ns2.bluehost.com	69.89.16.4	226,747
ns.xinnet.cn	121.14.70.4	214,079
ns.xinnetdns.com	121.14.70.6	214,025
ns51.domaincontrol.com	216.69.185.26	173,562
ns52.domaincontrol.com	208.109.255.26	172,309
ns1.dns.ne.jp	210.188.224.9	168,472
ns2.dns.ne.jp	210.224.172.13	168,366
ns57.1and1.com	74.208.2.9	162,813
ns58.1and1.com	74.208.3.8	162,810

Survey Limitations

Our survey, while having an impressive 56,185,345 sites and 26,550,786 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).