nslookup

Overview

When you type in a domain name, eg. www.adaptavist.com, your computer checks it's domain name server to find out the the IP address associated with that particular domain name. Once your computer has the IP address, it can go and talk to the server where the site is hosted.

If you're having problems accessing your site, including the scenario where other people seem to be able to access it without any problem, then the issue could be caused by incorrect information in your computer's name server. This tutorial is designed to gather the information our engineers will need to determine if this is the case and if so, fix it for you.

It should be noted that when new domain names are created, or existing domain names are updated, the changes can take up to 48 hours to propagate across the internet. The information gained by following this tutorial will also help determine if this scenario is occurring.

What is nslookup?

The nslookup command, which stands for "Name Server Lookup", allows you to see what IP address, if any, your computer associates with a given domain name.

Using nslookup

Open a Command Prompt and type nslookup www.yourdomain.com, obviously changing the "www.yourdomain.com" to whatever URL you are trying to access.

If you're using an Apple Mac, use Network Utility (OS X) instead.

An example name server lookup is shown below...

C:\> nslookup www.adaptavist.com
Server:  [193.38.113.3]
Address:  193.38.113.3

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    adaptavist-ssl.adaptavist.com
Address:  89.21.10.203
Aliases:  www.adaptavist.com
C:\

In the example above we can see that the domain www.adaptavist.com relates to the IP address 89.21.10.203.

After doing your name server lookup, please post the results (including the nslookup line at the start) in to a support ticket and our engineers will take care of the rest.