We're almost there! So far you've found out if you've only got 2 name servers telling the world where your domain is, how fast (or slow) they respond, and whether they might actually be in the same location (or maybe even the same single server!).

Now we can go one stage further, by tracing the route through the various internet pipelines to your nameservers. The information can be a little difficult to decipher, but, basically, if the route to your 2 (or more) name servers is pretty much the same, it's likely they're in the same place.

As a high percentage of commonly-used name servers are based in the USA, we've set our trace route tool to start from one of our servers in Canada, so that it takes a few more steps to reach the destination and gives a better indication if the name servers you're tracing are actually in the same place (or even the same machine). 

The Trace Route tool takes a few seconds to complete, so please be patient. When it's finished, you'll see a display something like this example from Canada to ns5.yahoo.com...

Trace Output:

1  66.49.248.1 (66.49.248.1)  1.051 ms
2  66.49.255.1 (66.49.255.1)  1.056 ms
3  g11-2-1.core01.yyz02.atlas.cogentco.com (38.99.208.97)  31.617 ms
4  v3490.mpd01.yyz02.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.3.230)  2.071 ms
5  v3492-mpd01.yyz01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.5.81)  1.229 ms
6  g3-0-0-3491-core01.yyz01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.5.77)  1.589 ms
7  p6-0.core01.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.217)  12.607 ms
8  p5-0.core01.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.118)  17.758 ms
9  p4-0.core02.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.81)  23.716 ms
10  v3491-mpd01.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.5.50)  23.445 ms
11  v3497-mpd01.iad01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.5.66)  23.971 ms
12  g14-0-0-3493.core01.iad01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.5.37)  23.965 ms
13  yahoo.iad01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.10.2)  24.138 ms
14  vlan200-msr1.dcn.yahoo.com (216.115.96.161)  24.510 ms
15  ge10-2.bas1-m.dcn.yahoo.com (216.109.120.203)  24.672 ms

Of course, if by now we've confused you to your wit's end, use our FREE "Check-Me" service to check through all the results of the previous few pages for you. We'll run all the checks, and email them back to you within 72 hours, with our interpretation of the results.