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	430,881
dns2.name-services.com	98.124.197.1	430,869
dns3.name-services.com	98.124.193.1	430,852
dns4.name-services.com	98.124.194.1	430,496
dns5.name-services.com	98.124.196.1	429,038
ns1.bluehost.com	74.220.195.31	372,067
ns2.bluehost.com	69.89.16.4	372,040
ns1.dreamhost.com	66.33.206.206	371,490
ns2.dreamhost.com	208.96.10.221	371,456
ns3.dreamhost.com	66.33.216.216	371,008
dns.technorail.com	62.149.128.2	283,624
dns2.technorail.com	62.149.132.2	283,621
dns3.arubadns.net	95.110.220.5	281,506
dns4.arubadns.cz	81.2.199.73	281,505
ns1.dns.ne.jp	210.188.224.9	232,555
ns2.dns.ne.jp	210.224.172.13	232,459
ns01.one.com	195.206.121.10	230,535
ns02.one.com	195.206.121.138	230,534
ns.namespace4you.de	80.67.16.124	180,971
ns2.namespace4you.de	193.223.77.3	180,967

Survey Limitations

Our survey, while having an impressive 76,681,895 sites and 33,267,489 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).