To begin using your Dyn Standard DNS or Secondary DNS service, you must delegate (assign) the domain name to our servers.
If your domain is registered with Dyn, visit the Zone Level Services page and click the Domain Registration link for your domain name, then click the Edit Nameservers button. If you are using Dyn Standard DNS, simply click the Set to Dyn Standard DNS Nameservers button to automatically configure your domain.
If your domain is registered with another company, please see their documentation for instructions on changing your domain’s delegation. To find the nameservers assigned to your account, please follow these instructions:
- Log in to your Dyn.com account.
- Visit the Zone Level Services page.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page below Zone Level Services for Your Account’s Nameservers.
- Then follow your domain registrar’s instructions for changing your domain’s delegation. Here is a list of popular registrars and instructions on how to delegate your domain through their web portals:
How do I change DNS providers without downtime?
To avoid losing queries when switching to Dyn Standard DNS, please follow these instructions:
- Create the new Dyn Standard DNS service for your domain.
- Recreate the records from your old DNS provider in Dyn Standard DNS. By “mirroring” the zones, visitors will get identical results during the transition.
- Wait for Dyn Standard DNS to finish activating to the status Active.
- Change the nameserver delegation from your old provider to the Dyn nameservers using the above instructions.
- Wait three days. You should avoid making significant changes to your DNS records during this time. If you must, update the records with your old DNS provider as well.
- After three days, you may safely shut down your services with the old DNS provider.
This slow transition will ensure cached queries are still answered by your old provider, while new queries are answered by Dyn.
Delegating a Subdomain
Delegating a single subdomain to Dyn Standard DNS is easy. Please follow these steps to perform the subdomain delegation:
- Create Dyn Standard DNS: Purchase Dyn Standard DNS for the subdomain itself, e.g. dynamic.example.com.
- Locate the zone’s assigned nameservers: using the ‘If your domain is registered with another company’ instructions above.
- Create NS records: In your current zone file for your domain at the other DNS provider, you will need to create NS (NameServer) records. These NS records “redirect” queries for the specific subdomain to Dyn Standard DNS. For dynamic.example.com, these records would look like:
dynamic.example.com. 48600 IN NS ns1xxx.dns.dyn.com. dynamic.example.com. 48600 IN NS ns2xxx.dns.dyn.com. dynamic.example.com. 48600 IN NS ns3xxx.dns.dyn.com. dynamic.example.com. 48600 IN NS ns4xxx.dns.dyn.com.
Please note the trailing “.” after each hostname. Also, you should replace the ‘xxx‘ shown above with the actual server numbers listed on the Zone level Services page of your account.
Once these NS records have been created, queries for the subdomain will be answered by your Dyn Standard DNS zone.
What does the Delegation status on my zone indicate?
You may notice that your Dyn Standard DNS or Secondary DNS service is marked “Deprecated”, “Correct”, or “Incorrect” on its overview page. This indicates:
- Deprecated indicates the zone is set to Dyn’s old nameservers and should be updated to Dyn’s new nameservers as listed in the recommended nameservers list in the right-hand column on the zone’s service page.
- Correct indicates the nameserver delegation is properly configured. To see the current delegation click Correct.
- Incorrect indicates the delegated nameservers are not Dyn’s nameservers or are an invalid mix of Dyn and non-Dyn nameservers. NOTE: the zone will still be propagated out to Dyn’s nameservers, but queries will not be reaching Dyn’s nameservers consistently. This can lead to inconsistant results and/or poor performance.