What does one call name server registration?

[Michael David Crawford]

Valentin and Olivier,

Thank you very much for your kind help.

I think what I needed were *both* NS and GLUE records.  The NS record 
establishes a host as a nameserver, and the GLUE record allows the name 
server's own domain name to be within the domain it is the name server 
for - that is, GLUE records prevent infinite loops when looking up the 
domain it is a part of.

I found a page in NameScout's Help section that said that if I just 
enter a totally new name server into my domain admin, they would take 
care of registering it automatically.  That seems to have worked, but it 
was not at all obvious that that's what I needed to do.

They also don't have any kind of automated interface for changing the 
name server info - one has to email tech support to do that.

I could see it causing a lot of trouble, if confused users enter 
incorrect info, and NameScout interprets that as a request to establish 
NS and GLUE records for a new name server!

Clearly, I myself have a lot of studying to do.

The Wikipedia article on the Domain Name System is very helpful, for 
anyone else wanting info on this topic.

Mike
-- 
Michael David Crawford
mdc at prgmr.com

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