Changing nameserver entry - who is responsible [closed]

Question

I have a DNS entry which should be changed. In detail, the nameserver are in the company itself. Now this should be changed because the nameserver should not be used anymore. If I make a WHOIS request I see the following:

Domain owner is a hosting company. Admin-C is a hosting company. Tech-C is the company with the nameserver in house.

If the nameserver should be changed whom should I contact? Normally, I would say the Tech-C but in this case he is coming to me ... So the local registrar of my country? Who is able to make this change and what is necessary?

Solution:

So I figured it out. Tech-C had the domain (and all entries). Neither the domain owner nor the Admin-C had the entries (old entries from WHOIS record). So now we are switching to a new provider which offers domain-, email- and webhosting.

Answer 1

To change the actual name server(s) of the domain, this must be done where the domain is registered e.g. Godaddy.

Answer 2

Your question is a little confusing because you aren't using any of the terms usually used in connection with the domain name system.

The top of the chain is the "registrar." These are the people you buy the domain name from. They maintain a domain record, which includes contact information for the domain. Part of that domain record is a list of DNS servers which are considered "authoritative" for the domain. This is called the "Start Of Authority" or SOA. (These name servers are considered "authoritative" because there are other name servers around the net, e.g. Google's at 8.8.8.8, which serve cached DNS resolutions but are not the final word, so to speak, on a given domain.) The SOA for serverfault.com is ns1.serverfault.com and sysadmins.stackoverflow.com.

The DNS servers listed in the SOA should have complete records for the "zone", and may delegate sub-zones to other DNS servers. This is where the work of "resolving" names happens, i.e. translating "serverfault.com" into 64.34.119.12. This is usually (but not always) the hosting company.

If you want to change the SOA - the servers which will be authoritative for the domain - you need to do it with the registrar. If you want to change a single record - make "dev.serverfault.com" point to 64.34.119.13 - you'll do that with the DNS servers, which in your case is Tech-C.

Answer 3

As pjmorse said, the top of the chain is the Registrar. Examples of registrars are GoDaddy, Markmonitor, Dreamhost, Eurodns, etc.

The Registrar is where you (usually) bought the domain. If you don't know who is the registrar, chances are you can detect it from a WHOIS call. Depending on the TLD, the registrar is normally listed in the Registrar field.

Be careful because if this is a gTLD, such as .COM, the registrar listed might not be your registrar but the accredited ICANN registrar used by your hosting company to register the domain. For example, you bought the domain from FooDomain Inc. who is registering .COM domains through Dynadot. In this case, have a look at the Technical contact or Owner.

Actually, you should be the owner of the domain (the Admin or Registrant) but it seems from your question that an hosting company is listed as owner. In this case, chances are that this hosting company is the one "you" used to register the domain and this is the one you first need to contact to recover your account.

Once you regain access to your account, whatever is the hosting company or the registrar, you should be able to change the nameservers associated to the domain using their control panel. They have control over the nameservers, directly or indirectly via the ICANN accredited registrar.

Change the nameserver to the record you want to use and it's done.

What nameserver you should use depends on you. A nameserver is responsible for resolving your domain hostnames into IPs. It means you should point it to an other server, hosting company or DNS provider that lets you manage your hostnames. If you don't have one there are several choices available such as DNSimple or Zerigo.