Testing nameserver configuration using it

1. If you don't already know the FQDN of the nameserver(s) for example.com, then go to http://www.dnsstuff.com and do a WHOIS lookup to discover the nameservers. Let's assume they are ns1.dns.com and ns2.dns.com.

2. Using that information, and assuming your new nameserver has IP address 192.168.1.10, add/save this in your C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file on your test machine:

   192.168.1.10 ns1.dns.com ns2.dns.com

3. Open a command prompt and type ipconfig /flushdns

4. Using the nslookup command at the command prompt, run some tests against your new nameserver. For example, nslookup www.example.com.

5. Now look at the output from nslookup. The first pair of lines indicate the nameserver that answered your request and the IP address of that nameserver. It should be the IP address of your new nameserver. The next set of lines will show the name of the machine you asked for (www.example.com) and its IP address or addresses.

6. Once you are satisfied and completed your testing, remove the entries you added to your hosts file in step 2, then repeat step 3.

nslookup is able to do that. It would go like nslookup -debug example.com ns.something.example