Frequently Asked Questions

The NearlyFreeSpeech.NET FAQ (*)

Domain Name Service (DNS) (*)

Q. Why are my active and authoritative name servers different?

If you have NearlyFreeSpeech.NET DNS for your domain, your authoritative name servers are the "official" name servers for that domain.

However, in order for these name servers to be used, you must take the list of authoritative name servers and make them active by entering them at your domain registrar (even if your domain is registered through us).

If you go to the DNS information panel and see both "Authoritative Name Servers" and "Active Name Servers" then you have NearlyFreeSpeech.NET DNS, but your domain registration points elsewhere.

If that's the case, you have two options to correct the problem:

This scenario most commonly arises when you transfer an existing domain name from another registrar without updating the name servers first. In that case, you just need to change them in our system once the transfer completes.

For maximum reliability it is always best to make sure that the active and authoritative name servers match. There are isolated reports of weird things happening if they don't, and some ccTLD registries (notably .DE) actually verify that they match before allowing changes.