A nameserver is a specific server that answers DNS questions for a domain. It's the piece of infrastructure that actually holds and serves a domain's DNS records (see DNS Record Types, Explained), including which IP address the domain points to.

Every domain needs at least two nameservers, listed with the domain's registration, for redundancy — if one is unreachable, the other can still answer. NameBright's own default nameservers, assigned automatically when you register through NameBright and don't specify your own, are ns1.namebrightdns.com and ns2.namebrightdns.com .

Nameservers sit within a broader hierarchy of DNS resolution:

1. Root servers know which server is responsible for each TLD.

2. TLD servers (for .com , .org , and so on) know which nameservers are responsible for each specific domain within that TLD.

3. Authoritative nameservers — like NameBright's, or a custom set you've pointed a domain to instead — hold the actual, final-answer DNS records for that domain.

A request works its way down this chain until it reaches the authoritative nameserver with the real answer. See Public DNS vs. Authoritative DNS for how this differs from the "recursive" DNS servers that do the asking on your behalf, and Custom Nameservers vs. NameBright's Default Nameservers for what it means to point a domain at a custom set of nameservers instead of NameBright's own.