How can I tell if my name server is down?

Yes that can be the case… Try setting up the a-records as well for more stability… Also, maybe change nameservers. I am with dnsmadeeasy.com . Fast, cheap, reliable! Good luck!

It can be the case, but it could be a number of other things.

DNS is designed to be a distributed database, with records being cacheable for a certain length of time. So if you can connect to a host by IP number but not by domain name, there are a couple things that could be wrong.

One is that the primary authoritative name server for that domain is down, and the hosting company does not have a secondary name server. This is a sign of major incompetence; any sensibly run hosting company will have a partnering agreement with another hosting company to back up each other’s DNS records, or will have multiple redundant DNS servers in different locations.

Another is that your network might have a DNS server of its own; my home network operates like this. Computers inside the firewall query the local DNS server, which answers the query if it’s in cache or relays it to the authoritative server if it’s not. If that DNS server goes down, you won’t be able to resolve any DNS queries even though there’s nothing wrong with the authoritative DNS server.

Another is that there’s some network issue between you and the authoritative DNS server that’s preventing queries or responses getting back and forth.

Of course, if you have ns1.nameserver.com as your computer’s nameserver, and you don’t know its IP number, then you get into a chicken and egg situation where you can’t resolve DNS queries until you know the IP number of the nameserver, and you can’t find out the IP number of the nameserver until you resolve a DNS query.

thanks, good read!

have you heard of opendns.com? It is so easy. Always works. Free.