Hey guys,

I have a perfect question that someone here hopefully will be able to shed some light on!!!

I've got myself a test server and want to run run little 'ISP' hosting system on it as a pet project, I'm using the open source software 'ISP Config 3.0'; I want to host my own DNS name server on the server I host my websites.

I've successfully got it down pat with a '.com.au' site, but apparently '.com' sites have a different nameserver validation process.

I have my 'ns1.domain' and 'ns2.domain' A records pointing to the IP address of the server and an MX record for mail.

My A records are ping-able, this works fine for my .com.au sites, but using the same information for my .com sites it just doesn't want to work.

My guess is, is that each nameserver must be on it's own unique IP address? if that is the case then in the site control panel, am I able to use one of my custom nameservers and leave the second entry as the default from the domain registrar?

Thanks guys!

I have my 'ns1.domain' and 'ns2.domain' A records pointing to the IP address of the server and an MX record for mail.

The domain actually needs to be delegated to those two servers - just making A records for their names isn't enough. You can do this in your domain name control panel usually.

What Jim said. I use ISPConfig3 for my own little server and it's a brilliant CP system although with the ever increasing number of 'free' services like mail hosting (gmail), DNS hosting (DNSPark) and so on my server is slowly becoming just a web server.

have you used cpanel or plesk recently tic? if so how does ispconfig3 compare to those just out of interest?

Nope I haven't used them in ages.. the main advantages I can see is that they allow you to do installs of packages like WP, Joomla, etc whereas ISPConfig3 doesn't have that functionality (might have as a plugin or something but I haven't looked into it).

I have delegated the nameservers in the domain control panel, which is why I'm stuck why its not working :(

is there a site or tool where you can test to see if your nameserver is valid I wonder?

dnsstuff.com is useful for diagnosing dns issues, or good old dig

pm me the domain name if you want and I'll have a quick look

Thanks very much for your help Jim, PM sent :)