Registrars and name servers

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas Duterme <thomas at madeforchina.com> writes:

    Thomas> My registrar is register.com.  When I first registered my
    Thomas> domain (madeforchina.com), I made two nameservers for the
    Thomas> domain: beast.madeforchina.com and
    Thomas> grendel.madeforchina.com.  My domain now only has one name
    Thomas> server acting as authoritative: grendel.madeforchina.com.
    Thomas> When I first defined these two name servers @
    Thomas> register.com, they required me to give an IP address for
    Thomas> each name.  Now, each time I need to change this domain's
    Thomas> IP, I still need to go through register.com to make the
    Thomas> change, even though these are third level domains.  My
    Thomas> main question: why does register.com have authority over
    Thomas> the association of an A record with this third level
    Thomas> domain?

In a word, glue. The .com zone needs to contain A records for the name
servers you've announced for madeforchina.com. If those A records
didn't exist, nobody would be able to query your name servers because
the addresses of those name servers would not be known. They would
only be found by querying the madeforchina.com name servers to find
the addresses of beast and grendel. But those queries would have to go
to beast or grendel, the two servers you registered for your domain...

    Thomas> I guess I am a little confused between the relationship my
    Thomas> registrar plays with my domain and the root servers.

You bet! Your registrar and domain has nothing to do with the root
servers at all. There is a relationship with the .com name servers
however.

    Thomas> Why does my registrar control the associations of my name
    Thomas> servers with my domain?

Because of glue records. If you say a.b.com is a name server for
b.com, the .com zone has to have an A record (the glue) for a.b.com.

    Thomas> Do I have to go through my
    Thomas> registrar to associate and advertise a new nameserver to
    Thomas> the internet?

No. But you must go through the registrar if you change the addresses or
names of the servers you gave them when you registered your domain. If
you don't do that, the name servers for your parent domain (.com)
won't know about the change and will point other name servers to the
old addresses.