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Setting the Name Servers for a Domain Name

Table of Contents

To set the name servers, your domain must be registered with DNSimple. If that’s not the case, use the control panel of your current domain registrar to update the name servers.

You can set the name servers of a domain registered with DNSimple from your domain page.

Pointing the name servers to another provider

Pointing the name servers to another provider will cause the domain to resolve using the DNS records configured at the other DNS provider. The DNS records in your DNSimple account will be ignored.

To point the name servers to another provider
  1. If you have more than one account, select the relevant one.

  2. On the header, click the tab, locate the relevant domain, and click on the name to access the domain page.

    Domain Page link

  3. Click on the left sidebar.

  4. On the Domain delegation card, click .

    Domain Delegation card

  5. Enter the names of the name servers you want to use.

    Enter name servers

  6. Instead of manually entering the name server names, you can also click to select a name server set.

    Add a name server set

    If the name server has glue IP address(es) associated with it in the name server set, and is a child zone of the domain which is having the delegation updated, glue records will be created for the domain at the registry. For instance, if ns1.example.com is being configured as a name server for the domain “example.com”, and ns1.example.com has glue IP address(es) associated with it in the name server set it belongs to, the glue records needed to resolve ns1.example.com to its associated IP address(es) will be created at the registry.

  7. Click to apply the name server changes.

DNSimple’s listing of NS records for the domain will be updated to match the name server changes.

Pointing the name servers to DNSimple

Pointing the name servers to DNSimple provider will cause the domain to resolve using the DNS records configured in your DNSimple account.

To change the name servers to DNSimple, follow the steps in Delegating a Domain registered with DNSimple to DNSimple.

Reserved name servers

If you have Secondary DNS or Vanity Name Servers set up for your domain, the name servers belonging to the Secondary DNS or Vanity Name Servers configuration are considered “reserved”, i.e. they cannot be edited or removed through the Edit delegation page.

Reserved name servers

To make changes to a reserved name server, click on the configuration icon next to it. You will be taken to the Secondary DNS or Vanity Name Servers configuration where you can make the necessary changes.

Edit reserved name servers through configuration

Glue records

If you are adding a name server that is a child of the domain, glue records are required. You will be prompted about the missing glue records upon clicking . To add glue record, create a name server set, and click on the page to apply it.

The above video also demonstrates adding missing glue records directly from the Edit delegation page. However, this is no longer supported. Glue records can only be added via applying name server sets that contain the necessary glue records.

What are glue records?

DNS glue records are used when a domain name uses name servers that are children of the domain name itself.

Let’s say you own the domain name example.com that uses the name servers ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com. When a DNS resolver asks the TLD name server for example.com, it would respond with ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com, but we don’t know which IP addresses these names correspond to. Without an IP address, the resolver can’t establish a connection to the name server to ask for the IP address.

To solve this problem, TLD domain name servers let you specify IP addresses for the name servers directly in the TLD name servers. When you ask a TLD name server for the name servers of example.com, you not only get back ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com, you also get A records for ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com as part of the response. DNS resolvers then know where to go for the rest of the details.

Have more questions?

If you have further questions or need assistance setting up name servers for your domain, contact support, and we’ll be happy to help.