specify IP address or is it automagic?

[kiteless]

i have a really stupid question. i haven't messed around with registering a domain name in a couple years now, and in the past i always have had to specify the IP address that the domain belongs to at the registrar's site. i just registered a domain with AletiaNIC.com (through jaguar), and i am multihosting another domain i own that is registered through register.com. neither registar has a place for me to specify what the ip address is, just nameservers. is that automagic now? if i have jaguar's nameservers in, is that all i need to do? thanks in advance!

[jason]

Yes, that's all you need. DNS servers, not the registrar, are resposible for mapping your domain name to its IP address. IP addresses often change frequently (JPC is in the process of changing everyone's IP addresses right now, for instance), so the system was designed to localize the resolution of names to IP's insttead of relying on the registrar to do it, making updates "take" faster.

In the old days, when Network Solutions (now Verisign) was the only registrar, I belive you were required to specify the IP addresses of your name servers. Now you only need to specify the names (at least for the com, net, org, us, info, etc. TLD's). I don't know of any time that you would give the registrar your site's actual IP address, unless you were using them as your DNS proiver (many registrars offer this service these days).

--Jason

[kiteless]

thanks a bunch!