NSLOOKUP not finding domains (newbie question)

[Barry Margolin]

In article <38EB167B.650E8AD7 at nospam.com>, Sparhawk  <flute at nospam.com> wrote:
>Hi all.
>Apologies if this is the wrong group for this question.
>I am using NSLOOKUP to try to find domains that my DNS can't locate
>(Microsoft DNS on NT4 SP5) then placing the MX record IP address  in a
>HOSTS file for e-mail lookups.  It tends to work fairly well.  But,
>recently we have received incoming mail from domains in IE (Ireland) and
>CO (Columbia, I think) but cannot reply.  NSLOOKUP can't find the
>domains.  I pointed NSLOOKUP at our ISPs DNS, but it couldn't find the
>domains either.

Maybe the domains don't actually exist!  Give us some examples.

>Is there some other tool for doing domain lookups?  

I recommend DIG rather than NSLOOKUP.

>						     Also, I thought if
>you had a domain like company.com.co, it had to have a root domain of
>"co".  However in this case the root domain seemed to be "com".(??)

I don't understand what you mean.  If the domain is company.com.co, the
top-level domain *is* "co", the 2nd-level domain is "com", and the
3rd-level domain is "company".  What's wrong with that?  Are you confused
by the fact that Columbia happens to have a 2nd-level domain that's the
same as a generic TLD?  There are quite a few countries that pattern their
2nd-level domains after the generic TLDs.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
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