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	162.159.24.80	405,535
ns2.bluehost.com	162.159.25.175	405,522
f1g1ns2.dnspod.net	101.226.220.16	329,702
f1g1ns1.dnspod.net	14.215.150.17	329,334
ns1.dreamhost.com	64.90.62.230	311,346
ns2.dreamhost.com	208.97.182.10	311,337
ns3.dreamhost.com	66.33.205.230	311,090
dns2.technorail.com	62.149.132.2	304,490
dns.technorail.com	62.149.128.2	304,489
dns3.arubadns.net	95.110.220.5	304,364
dns4.arubadns.cz	81.2.199.73	304,363
ns02.one.com	195.206.121.138	266,855
ns01.one.com	195.206.121.10	266,855
ns2.dns.ne.jp	133.167.21.1	237,500
ns1.dns.ne.jp	61.211.236.1	237,493
ns.namespace4you.de	80.67.16.124	226,857
ns2.namespace4you.de	193.223.77.3	226,852
ns5.kasserver.com	85.13.128.3	219,041
ns6.kasserver.com	85.13.159.101	219,012
dns1.name-services.com	162.88.61.23	188,178

Survey Limitations

Our survey, while having an impressive 85,417,855 sites and 31,492,048 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).