Nslookup

Nslookup

This diagnostic tool displays information from Domain Name System (DNS) name servers. Before using this tool, you should be familiar with how DNS works. Nslookup is available only if the TCP/IP protocol has been installed.

Modes

Nslookup has two modes: interactive and noninteractive.

If you need to look up only a single piece of data, use noninteractive mode. For the first argument, type the name or IP address of the computer to be looked up. For the second argument, type the name or IP address of a DNS name server. If you omit the second argument, the default DNS name server is used.

If you need to look up more than one piece of data, you can use interactive mode. Type a hyphen (-) for the first argument and the name or IP address of a DNS name server for the second argument. Or, omit both arguments and the default DNS name server is used.

nslookup [-option ...] [computer-to-find | - [server]]

Parameters

-option ...

Specifies one or more nslookup commands as a command-line option. For a list of commands, see Nslookup Subcommands Each option consists of a hyphen (-) followed immediately by the command name and, in some cases, an equal sign (=) and then a value. For example, to change the default query type to host (computer) information and the initial time-out to 10 seconds, you would type:

nslookup -querytype=hinfo -timeout=10

The command line length must be less than 256 characters.

computer-to-find

Looks up information for computer-to-find using the current default server or using server if specified. If computer-to-find is an IP address and the query type is A or PTR, the name of the computer is returned. If computer-to-find is a name and does not have a trailing period, the default DNS domain name is appended to the name. This behavior depends on the state of the set options: domains, srchlist, defname, and search.

To look up a computer not in the current DNS domain, append a period to the name.

If you type a hyphen (-) instead of computer-to-find, the command prompt changes to nslookup interactive mode.

server

Specifies to use this server as the DNS name server. If you omit server, the default DNS name server is used.

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