domain name system - how to find out who is managing my DNS records?

I have a following situation:
a website is registered with registrar X, hosted on server Y and about to move to server Z.

The both servers Y and Z do not manage the domain DNS as according to them “it is managed by the company it was purchased from and then pointed to their servers in order to publish the site”.

In fact on both servers there is no trace of my domain DNS management (I cannot update the ‘A’ records for example). I spoke to both servers Y and Z and they said they cannot manage something they don’t “see”.

I spoke to the registrar X and the deny the DNS management for this particular domain as “their settings only require you to point to your DNS host addresses. Any further settings such as 'A' records would have to be configured using the control panel of your DNS hosting provider.”

In fact inside the control panel of registrar X I can only update the name servers and that’s all. I cannot update the ‘A’ records.

I looked up for the website DNS on web and it looks that it points to the server Y.

Moreover the default DNS name servers for both server Y and Z are exactly the same.

Is there any way for me to find who is managing this domain DNS? What can I do?

Answer

There are three parts to this.

The first is your domain registrar. This organization is who you purchased the domain name from. The domain registrar is going to be the organization that specifies if you are using delegated Name Servers. The delegated Name Servers are where your zone file is going to be located.

The second is your Name Server. Whatever your domain registrar is configured to use as your Name Servers is where your zone file is. That is where you want to access to make changes to DNS records.

The third is your hosting provider. You might have a third company that hosts Internet (Web, Files, Email) content. You can who the hosting providers are by reviewing the A and MX records in the Name Server.

The easiest way to determine what the authoritative Name Servers for your domain are is to go to MXToolbox and lookup your domain name.

To demonstrate let's go to MXToolbox and lookup the mail exchanger (MX) record for example.org.

http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=mx%3aexample.org&run=toolpage

It will say "No Recrods Exist" and near that you will see it says "Reported by [xyz]". Whatever the name comes after "Reported by" is your Name Server. Whoever owns the Name Server is who manages your DNS. You will need to contact them if you are not able to make changes to your DNS records on your own.