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NSLookup

NSLookup Overview

(See also NSlookup reference guide)
Command nslookup
When you run across domain name server problems, nslookup is currently the most accessible tool to use, available both in windows and unix (linux) environments.

Lets start nslookup (an interactive session) and then query for the domain elouai.com:

>nslookup
Default Server: ns.directpc.com
Address: 66.82.4.8

Let's query the domain name elouai.com
>elouai.com
Server: ns.directpc.com
Address: 66.82.4.8

Non-authoritive answer:
Name: elouai.com
Address: 64.246.1.38

"ns.directpc.com" is the nameserver used to lookup elouai.com domain, the ip address of this nameserver is given below

"Non-authoritive answer:" means that the name server is using it's local cache to retrieve the answer and not directly querying the name server again. The first time this IP is requested, you would get "authoritive answer:".

Changing name servers

Let's say we just purchased a domain name and updated the name servers to point to our hosting provider's name servers. A quick check can be made to determine if the domain was properly added to the zone list on your hosting providers dns servers.

>server ns1.ev1servers.net
Default Server: ns1.ev1servers.net
Address: 207.218.245.135

>elouai.com
Server: ns1.ev1servers.net
Address: 207.218.245.135

Name: elouai.com
Address: 64.246.1.38

In this example the name server recognizes "elouai.com" and returns the correct server IP address that this site is located on.

Name server not responding

What if you typed in the wrong name server OR the name server is misbehaving and buggy? Let's say a certain name server is misbehaving or does not exist (in the example below we use ev1servers.net with a missing subdomain ns1)

>server ev1servers.net
Default Server: ev1servers.net
Address: 207.218.223.142

>elouai.com
Server: ev1servers.net
Address: 207.218.223.142

** Domain not found

>server ns.direcpc.com

** Domain not found

>lserver ns.direcpc.com
Default Server: ns.directpc.com
Address: 66.82.4.8

Once you have switched to a faulty name server, an error continues to pop up, even when attempting to return back to your old name server.

To get around this error, you would request "lserver", meaning local server. Thus the local server will resolve the domain name in the query.

To exit nslookup type "exit" or "+d" ("+c" for windows) to quit

Note:
Nslookup function has been deprecated and the favored tool of choice is "dig".

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