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
ns1.bluehost.com	74.220.195.31	446,654
ns2.bluehost.com	69.89.16.4	446,640
dns2.name-services.com	98.124.197.1	430,184
dns3.name-services.com	98.124.193.1	430,184
dns1.name-services.com	98.124.192.1	430,183
dns4.name-services.com	98.124.194.1	429,944
dns5.name-services.com	98.124.196.1	428,415
ns1.dreamhost.com	66.33.206.206	399,936
ns2.dreamhost.com	208.96.10.221	399,898
ns3.dreamhost.com	66.33.216.216	399,397
f1g1ns1.dnspod.net	119.167.195.12	349,264
f1g1ns2.dnspod.net	112.90.143.29	347,926
dns2.technorail.com	62.149.132.2	312,093
dns.technorail.com	62.149.128.2	312,091
dns3.arubadns.net	95.110.220.5	310,863
dns4.arubadns.cz	81.2.199.73	310,861
ns1.dns.ne.jp	210.188.224.9	259,168
ns2.dns.ne.jp	210.224.172.13	259,122
ns65.1und1.de	217.160.82.171	228,950
ns66.1und1.de	217.160.83.171	228,949

Survey Limitations

Our survey, while having an impressive 81,443,754 sites and 36,801,594 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).