As in: Someone addresses the domain in their browser, and
although the system looks to the registrar's name servers,
the system is redirected to my own name servers elsewhere
to present the site instead.
The site is not registered and hosted at the same company.
Someone addresses the domain in their browser, and although the system looks to the registrar's name servers, the system is redirected to my own name servers elsewhere to present the site instead.
Yes, this possible, at least with many registrars.
Let me first define three words:
Registry The central database which contains basic information about all domains for a TLD (.com/.net etc)
Registrar The service provider where you rent the use of your domainname for $X.XX per year.
Registrant You, the one who pays to use the domain name.
Normally when you register a domain name with a registrar, the domain registrar offers their DNS servers to you to administer basic information like the IP address of your webserver, MX records for email etc.
Most registrars also allow you to have the name of your personal nameserver registered at the registry instead. In that case the registrar removes their own name server name in the registry entry for your domain, and adds yours instead.
The way DNS queries are handled is comparable with a three stage rocket:
Please note, that when your nameserver is registered at the registry as being authorative for your domain name, it must return all necessary information for that domain, including MX records for mail, SPF records for spam protection etc because such a registration bypasses the nameservers of your registrar.
but not have direct public access to the names of my nameservers
Can you explain what you mean by "direct public access"?
And what is your reason for wanting to do this? (For example: "avoid DDOS attacks on my nameservers").
The answer is probably "no", but to be sure you need to define exactly what you mean.
The names and IP addresses of your nameservers is always going to be available to the public through "whois" and DNS tools such and "dig" and "nslookup". It's just the way the system works. DNS can't work if the names and IP addresses of your DNS servers is unknown.
Aside from this, I don't recommend running your own DNS servers. You cannot provide the reliability or geographic redundancy that your registrar or a third-party DNS-hosting company can provide, unless you are prepared to spend a great deal of money.
If you simply want it to "look" like you are running your own DNS servers, that can be accomplished easily, but you will probably have to use a third-party DNS provider. This is known as "vanity DNS". You will register names in one of your own domains that point to the provider's DNS servers. Thus, you can have, say, ns1.example.com, ns2.example.com, ns3.example.com as your DNS servers, but you don't actually have to run any DNS servers of your own.
It's also possible to have a "master" DNS server that is "hidden". Your DNS servers get updates from the "master", but the "master" is unknown to the public. Again, you will probably have to use a third-party DNS hosting service for this. This simply allows you to maintain your own master server (with, potentially, it's own unique user interface) rather than having to do updates on the DNS provider's web site. One application of this might be where a site doles-out host names to users. (user.example.com). Rather than use a specific DNS host provider's API to do the updates, you could just update the master server.
But keeping the public from discovering the names/IP addresses of your DNS servers? Does not compute. Only way to do that is not to have DNS servers in the first place. They have to be public in order to work.
Ah, I re-read your question, and I *think* that the scenario with the master server (sometimes called "secondary DNS") might be what you want. The public won't actually access your DNS server, though. The third-party DNS provider's servers will do a periodic "zone transfer" from your DNS server, and DNS will be served from their servers.
Again, this is unlikely to be available at your registrar, and you will have to use a third-party DNS provider. It need not be expensive. For a single or small number of domains, perhaps $10-15/year, with steep discounts for additional domains.
You can newly reg the needed 2 dns nameservers at your registrar (usually a free service), and immediately order domain privacy covering the nameserver domain
What the poster was looking for, though, is to hide the names of his nameservers, not his contact details. I think the intent is to not tie the new sites to their existing site.
Hiding the names of the nameservers is simply impossible.
The only full solution is to use a different namserver for the new domains. Either registrar-provided or third-party DNS servers, instead of using their own nameservers with accomplish this (all anyone would know is that they are using the same nameservers as thousands of other customers of the same registrar or DNS provider). And it's generally a far superior technical solution than running your own nameservers, which is almost always a bad idea.
A final option (still using a third-party DNS provider, but generally not offered by registrars) is "vanity DNS". This would give the nameservers the same domain names as the new sites. (e.g. site is example2.com, nameservers are ns1.example2.com, ns2.example2.com.
In this case, you still wouldn't want to use your existing nameservers, as the IP address could tie the new sites to the old one. The vanity DNS names would still have to point to a third-party DNS server, where no useful information could be gleaned from the IP address.
