DNS Assurance Services - General DNS FAQ - DNS Protection Services from VeriSign, Inc.

DNS Assurance Services



General DNS FAQ

What is DNS?

DNS is the technology that ties text-based domain names to the numeric IP Addresses that are necessary to locate the domain's server on the net. Please refer to the following documents for more information:

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How can I host multiple Web sites on one IP Address?

You can set up as many domain names as you want pointing to the same IP Address using DNS, just keep adding zones, and setting the IP addresses. However, you need a Web server that uses the 'host' header to route the different domains to different Web instances.

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Can I use VeriSign's name servers for our LOCAL DNS Queries?

No, VeriSign's name servers are non-recursive, or non-caching, and should not be used to resolve your LOCAL DNS queries. Your Internet Service Provider's name servers should be used for this purpose. 
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Does VeriSign monitor SPAM abuse on its network?

Yes, we do monitor and do not tolerate SPAM abuse on our network.  
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My ISP blocked port 80, how can I run a Web server?

Here's how you can run a Web server:

  1. Sign up and get started with VeriSign DNS Hosting.
  2. Make your Web server listen on port number like "6000" or "5000"
  3. Check to see if your Web server works by in a browser using a URL: http://3.4.5.6:6000/. Use the port number that you're listening on and the real IP address of your machine.
  4. Add the "IP Address" for your Web server in VeriSign's Domain Manager: "ww2.domainname.com" points to "ip address".
  5. Add a Web Forward entry for your domain called "www.domainname.com" that points to http://ww2.domainname:6000/.

Turn cloaking off and let people know they are going to http://ww2.domainname.com:6000, which allows the browser to perform better.  
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How can I check to see if DNS is working?

A frequent mistake is to use "ping" to test DNS. On Windows NT/2K and Unix, there are tools called "nslookup" and "dig." Before you contact VeriSign's DNS Customer Support team, you can check to see whether or not your registrar is pointing your domain to the correct name servers. Since the Whois information may not be up to date, go to a command prompt/console and enter the command:

nslookup -type=NS yourdomainname.com

If the response does not contain all of the correct name servers, then you should contact your registrar to update the name server information.

To check to see whether a particular server is responding, you can add the server name:

nslookup www.yourdomainname.com nameservername.com

If the response has a number of 'root-servers' that means the server does not know about the domain name and is referring you elsewhere.

To look for a certain record type, like the "MX" record or the "SOA" record, you can use the parameter "-type=MX" or "-type=SOA".

nslookup -type=MX yourdomainname.com

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