Nslookup is an administrative command line tool which is used for testing DNS servers as well as troubleshooting. It is also installed alongside the protocol of TCP/IP through a control panel. For any one to be able to know how to use Nslookup you are supposed to keep in mind several things. One of these is that the protocol of TCP/IP requires to be installed while running as Nslookup.exe on the system. Also of importance to note is that single DNS servers require to at least be defined in the Service Searching Order field of the DNS tab in the Properties page of Microsoft TCP/IP.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Nslookup always devolves the name derived from the latest context. And this is as a result of name queries failing to be fully qualified results in the query being attached to the present context. An example of this will be the present DNS settings which are att.com when they are performing queries on microsoft website with the initial query going out as microsoft att and this is because it is unqualified. In some cases this can be an inconsistent behavior in regard to other vendor Nslookup versions.
Nslookup.exe is run in both interactive as well as non-interactive modes with the non-interactive mode being the best as it only requires one data piece to be returned. Nslookup.exe may be started in the interactive mode and this is by simply typing "Nslookup" on the command prompt. You can also type "?" or "help" on the command prompt so as to generate lists of obtainable commands. In order to interrupt interactive commands you should press CTRL+C. you can also type "Exit" on the command prompt so that an interactive mode can be exited followed by a return to the command prompt. There are also several other options that can be set in Nslookup.exe and this is by running at the prompt's set command.
You should type "set all" on the command prompt in order for you to be able to have these options. You can as well look up for different types of data within the name space of the domain which can be done using the set type command or set query type of the command prompt. It will always result in an authoritative answer if you make the initial query for remoter names and at the same time subsequent queries will result to non authoritative answers. Initial querying of the remote host also results in the respective DNS server contacting the authoritative DNS server for that specific domain.
You can also query directly from different name servers and here server commands or lserver should be used to switch to this name server. Lserver commands make use of the local servers with a specific aim of getting the server's address. Nslookup command can be used to find out the exact IP address that is resolved from domain name. Reverse DNS lookup command is useful in that it helps to check whether the DNS servers set in Microsoft Windows work properly. If for any reason they do not work properly a webpage will not be able to be displayed on your browser and this is because the domain names will not be translated into IP addresses.
Author Resource:
This article touched the basics of the topic. I have 2 more resources related to the above. They are how to use nslookup and reverse dns . Do consider reading them.
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