On This Page

• What Are Nameservers?

• How Nameservers Work

• How DNS and Nameservers Are Related

• Related Topics

What Are Nameservers?

Nameservers are a fundamental part of the Domain Name System (DNS), which is responsible for translating human-readable domain names into machine-readable IP addresses.

Nameservers are specialized servers that store information about a domain's DNS records and respond to requests from other servers on the internet to provide information about the domain's IP address and associated services. 

When you enter a domain name into a web browser, the browser sends a request to a nameserver to obtain the IP address associated with that domain name. The nameserver responds with the IP address, allowing the browser to connect to the correct server and display the website.

In essence, Nameservers serve as a bridge between the user-friendly domain names and the actual technical infrastructure that powers websites and email services.

Each domain must have at least two nameservers assigned to it to ensure redundancy and reliability in case one nameserver goes down or becomes unavailable.

How Nameservers Work

Nameservers from your webhost will usually look like the following, starting with ""ns1"" and ""ns2"", or something similar. Listed below are three examples you might use on your domain names.

Example 1: 

ns1.NameBrightDNS.com  ns2.NameBrightDNS.com

Example 2: 

ns1.google.com  ns2.google.com

Example 3: 

ns1.namebright.com  ns2.namebright.com

The nameservers you use will translate your domain name (such as www.example.com) into a machine readable IP address that might look like 216.38.198.64.

When a user's browser goes to a domain name, the nameserver tells the browser where to look, and your web server will need to be set up so that it responds to a request that is made on that address. For more information on how to get this to work, ask your web host what nameservers you should use.

How DNS and Nameservers Are Related

DNS (Domain Name System) and nameservers are related but not exactly the same thing. DNS is a system that translates domain names into IP addresses, allowing users to access websites using human-readable addresses.

Nameservers are specialized servers within the DNS infrastructure responsible for storing and managing DNS records for specific domain names.

So, while DNS encompasses the entire system of domain name resolution, nameservers are components within that system that handle the actual translation of domain names to IP addresses.