Using your own DNS server names

Many of our clients run their own DNS servers, and want to use DNS servers "inside" ther domain names. We do support this, and will help you set it up. This page is here to document some of the "gotchas" that can make this process tricky.

One of the issues is that the .COM and .CA registries handle DNS server records _very_ differently. (For the purpose of this page, .NET/ORG/INFO/BIZ/US are the same as .COM domains.)

The error

The problem

The problem is that the .COM registry maintains a list of acceptable name servers. This list has nothing to do with the DNS system. A reasonable metaphor for this would be a dictionary. If your new nameserver is not listed in the dictionary, then the .COM registry considers it to be a spelling error and rejects it.

The fix

There are two different types of the fix, and the one which is appropriate is determined by whether or not the nameserver name "belongs" to the same registry as the domain you are updating.

An example of this "same registry" case would be trying to set the DNS servers for example.com to dns100.baremetal.com. Both example.com and baremetal.com are ".com" domains. In this case, the owner of the baremetal.com domain needs to go to the registry and create a host record for dns100.baremetal.com. No one else has the authority to do this. For domains registered via BareMetal, you can do this by going into our 'manage domain' page, clicking on the nameserver link, and scrolling down to the _very_ bottom of the page. There you will find a link for creating new nameserver/host records.

If the domains do not match, then we can probably help. We have a tool for adding host records to the "dictionary" at the .COM and similar registries. Unfortunately we can not automate the use of that tool. In this case, just let us know what DNS servers you were trying to set for what domain, and we will either help or explain why we can't and what needs to be done.

Why are .CA domains different?

We have direct access to the .ca registry and can "automatically" add new host records. For other domains we work through OpenSRS and OpenSRS doesn't provide an API for doing that automatically.