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UPDATE 2/23/2016 I think my original question was confusing, so I am going to rephrase it: I have my own dedicated nameservers running cPanel DNS Only! I want to know how to give other people vanity nameservers!

Our company has its own dedicated nameservers running cPanel/WHM DNS Only, which are using the hostname ns1.ourcompany.com ns2.ourcompany.com and so forth.

One of our clients is a reseller and wants to use our nameservers but would like to white label them so that it says ns1.theircompany.com, ns2.theircompany.com and so forth.

Is there a hostname alias option that the nameserver will respond to? How would we achieve this?

I've read many time that using CNAME for nameservers is a really bad idea, so I am guessing that is not an option.

UPDATE Feb 2016

I've created A records to point to the nameserver IP addresses and it works! I don't know why it works and how I could prevent someone from pointing to them with a different domain. So if I pointed them to CloudFlare I could use cloudflare as the nameservers? How would CloudFlare prevent that? Also why would creating a CNAME record instead of an A record not work? It has been working for me on Amazon Route 53.

Neo
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2 Answers2

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Your question needs to be much improved with details for you to get good answers.

Without such details, all I can say as a superficial answer, is that setting the CNAME record is not enough, or anyone on the Internet could hijack any and all domain-names.

In the end, some authoritative nameserver must accept your nameservers as authoritative for cloudflare.com, and this is surely not going to happen. So anyone performing a DNS report on a domain that uses your 'white label' nameservers will see that those are not the real nameservers and will ignore the result.

Cloudflare will need to assist you in creating the appropriate records, for this to work the way you want it to, since they are the only ones having the needed authority for their domain. CloudFlare is within reason when limiting this option to paid accounts, since this involves work on their part. If they are too costly, you might shop for another supplier.

For your question about using A records or CNAME, the latter have some limitations :

  1. Usage of CNAME records may cause an additional request to the DNS servers, causing a further delay of a few milliseconds. Some DNS servers may send the A records with the answer to a CNAME request to avoid that delay.

  2. You cannot create a CNAME record for the main domain name (mydomain.com) itself, this must be an A record. For example, you cannot map mydomain.com to google.com, however, you can map google.mydomain.com to google.com.

  3. MX or NS (nameserver) records may never point to a CNAME record, only A records.

  4. Problems may occur if one of the A or CNAME records is found in the local DNS cache, but not the other one, in case of a change to the IP address or name.

harrymc
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  • Cloudflare was just an example. My original question was about my own dedicated nameservers that I have root access to, I would like to have them be the authoritative nameserver for both comapny1.com and company2.com, right now the linux hostname on the ns1.mycompany.com is configured but I would like the nameserver to also be the authoritive domain for ns1.resellerofmycompany.com. I've done this by simply adding a CNAME... but as you suggested in the case of CloudFlare this is not enough so what should I do. – Neo Feb 23 '16 at 19:53
  • Your choices are either to pay Cloudflare or go somewhere else. For example, Godaddy Premium DNS (€2.39/month) does vanity nameservers in their console as do-it-yourself ([help article](https://uk.godaddy.com/help/creating-vanity-nameservers-in-premium-dns-683)). – harrymc Feb 23 '16 at 20:17
  • I have my own dedicated nameservers running cPanel DNS Only! I want to know how to give other people vanity nameservers! – Neo Feb 23 '16 at 20:20
  • The procedure is documented in the other answer by "Random Username", and I don't want to steal it from him. If it doesn't work for you, then the problem is that you have authority for your own domain, but not for the other one, so you need to establish your nameserver as also authoritative for that domain. To do that, you might need to contact the registrar of that other domain or whatever. I would suggest to narrow your post to this one question. – harrymc Feb 23 '16 at 20:34
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Upon further research for what you are wanting to do, I found a few sites that you might want to look at and read the information on these sites. It appears to answer your questions in detail.

(Snippet From Source Below)

Of particular interest to hosting providers or resellers, having branded or vanity nameservers provides a more professional look to clients. It eliminates the need of asking your clients to point their domains to another company's nameservers. This tutorial will outline two approaches to creating custom nameservers: (i) Vanity and (ii) Branded.

Types => Vanity nameservers allow you to use your own domain name, without having to setup complicated zone files; you can do this using DigitalOcean's nameservers and DNS Manager. This is accomplished by mapping your custom nameservers to DigitalOcean's IPs.

Branded => Nameservers require a little more configuration, but allow you to exert complete control over DNS for your domain. The added control, however, carries with it the burden of having to self-manage your DNS. You'll need to deploy at least two VPS, with specialized software such as BIND, PowerDNS or NSD (for "name server daemon"). Wikipedia publishes a nice comparison of DNS server software.

| Create Vanity or Branded NAMESERVERS |

(Snippet From Source Below)

Can I create the following CNAMEs with "mydomain.com" to effectively whitelabel "mydnsprovider.com"'s nameservers?

ns1.mydomain.com CNAME --> ns1.mydnsprovider.com

ns2.mydomain.com CNAME --> ns2.mydnsprovider.com

| Use CNAME to White Label DNS |

Hope you find what you're looking for mate.

Community
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Random Username
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  • Please use blockquotes to indicate content taken from other sources. That makes it more apparent that you're not plagiarizing them. – bwDraco Feb 25 '16 at 22:56
  • Wow. Do MODS have their own individual set of rules that they "make up" on their own? Is there some sort of "site wide rules" for MODS? Or can anyone make up their own rules as they want to? – Random Username Feb 26 '16 at 00:27
  • @RandomUsername - The request to quote the another person's material you are referencing is in the help center, `bwdraco` isn't a moderator, please quote any statements that are not your own words. At this point you have content that isn't quoted, written by another person, which is basically plagiarism. – Ramhound Feb 26 '16 at 12:26