Error:
ns1.examplehost.com is not authoritative for zone example.ie. Your DNS change has been unsuccessful.
Please verify your DNS entry and try again. If you still get this error, please contact your hosting provider and ask them to set up DNS for your domain, and then try the change again.

What the above error is telling me is that a zone (or DNS record) does not exist for example.ie on the target nameservers. It is a requirement of all .ie domains that a zone exists on the target nameservers prior to actually making the change.

My next step is to contact the owners of the examplehost.com nameservers and request that
a zone be created for example.ie

How do I find out who owns the nameservers? If the nameserver itself is not a give away (dnsireland.com for Lethost nameservers) my first stop would be to go to do an Internet search for it. I could also do a WHOIS lookup on the domain by going to http://whois.domaintools.com and entering dnsireland.com. From the output I can see that this domain is registed by Letshost.

When contacting the owners of the nameservers I tell them the IP address of the server where my website and email are hosted.

e.g.: I have my website hosted with hostingprovider1.ie – IP: 1.2.3.4 <-- A record
I have my emails hosted with hostingprovider2.com - IP 2.4.6.8 <-- MX record

The information I forward on to the owners of examplehost.com is:

Hello,

Regards,
Johnny Customer

Once this zone is created for my domain I can then go back in to my client area and change the nameservers. The response I get this time is “Your DNS has been updated successfully !”

I wait about an hour for these changes to DNS to propagate and then check my site.
To my horror the site still displays a holding page or nothing at all! The reason for this is that changes to the nameservers of a .ie domain will only take effect after one of the IEDR reloads. These reloads occur at 10:00, 12:00, 17:00 & 22:00 7 days a week. For example if I changed my domains nameservers at 14:00 I would have to wait until the next IEDR reload at 17:00 before these changes would take effect.

So how does it work? Every computer on the internet is given a specific number called an IP address that
can uniquely identify that computer on a network. For example letshost.ie will resolve to 78.137.164.40 and google.ie resolves to 209.85.143.104.

DNS effectively acts as the phone directory of the internet mapping computer-readable IP addresses to
human-readable domain names. One could easily argue that the Internet would not have reached such levels of popularity if websites advertised on the internet were of the form http://123.321.12.23. This is just too
hard for humans to remember.

Nameservers hold a lot of information regarding a specific domain such as where to route a connection so
that the webpage is displayed or where to route email.

A domains “A” record governs where a domains website can be found. An A record is entered as an IP address so that when a nameserver is queried it looks down through the “phone book” until it finds the domain and and then redirects the user to the appropriate IP address. The same is true for the MX (mail exchange) record which directs a domains email.

Lets take the domain Letshost.ie as an example…
Letshost.ie uses the nameservers ns1.dnsireland.com & ns2.dnsireland.com
When you type letshost.ie in to your internet browser the .ie of TLD (top level domain) directs the connection the .ie root nameservers (IEDR). The root nameservers show that letshost.ie is currently using the following nameservers:
ns1.dnsireland.com & ns2.dnsireland.com

These nameservers contain the A and MX records (possibly alot more) for letshost.ie
The A record points to where the website is being hosted, 78.137.164.40 in this case.
The MX record routes email to a specific server antispam.letshost.ie which has an IP of 78.137.164.25

As you can see the DNS zone record for letshost.ie can direct traffic to differnt locations depending where the service is located. A subdomain bogota.lethost.ie can be set up and pointed to a server in Bogota to serve Letshosts customers in Colombia for example.

Changes to a domains nameservers will not happen instantly. These changes take time to propagate out to all the internets routers. The algorithms that are used by routers to direct internet traffic pass these changes of IP addresses to each other. It can take up 24hours for a domains to fully propagate throughout the internet.

Your domain name helps people to find you on the web, it’s part of your brand, your identity… a fundamental part of your online business.

So, given that the right domain can be such a vital business asset, just how much are people prepared to pay to get the perfect domain name?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

In 1999 the domain name Business.com took the top spot as the world’s most expensive domain when it attracted a whopping US$7.5 million. The domain reigned supreme until 2006, when sex.com was put on the open market and finally sold for between US$12-14 million (depending on who you talk to).

In late 2009 the record changed hands again when Insure.com was snapped up for a cool US$16 million.

While the market for domains isn’t as hot as it was in the dot.com boom years, it’s still a buoyant and lucrative one. Every year tens of millions of Euro change hands through the resale of internet domains.

What are the ten most expensive domain names in the world?

1. Insure.com, sold for $16 million in 2009.
2. Sex.com, sold for $12-$14 million in 2006.
3. Fund.com, sold for $9.99 million in 2008.
4. Porn.com, sold for $9.5 million in 2007.
5. Business.com, sold for $7.5 million in 1999.
6. Diamond.com, sold for $7.5 million in 2006.
7. Beer.com, sold for $7 million in 2004.
8. Israel.com, sold for $5.88 million in 2004.
9. Casino.com, sold for $5.5 million in 2003.
10. Toys.com, sold for $5.1 million in 2009.

Luckily you don’t have to pay that much to bag yourself a really great domain name. There are still plenty available for under €10 – grab yours from letshost today – it could be the best investment you ever make!

• Make it catchy, memorable and relevant: choose a catchy, easily identifiable domain name that’s relevant to your business and easy for people to remember.
• Use a country specific top level domain (ccTLD) to appeal to a local audience: if your market is local, it often pays to register the local version of the domain (.co.uk or .ie, for example) instead (or as well as) the more generic .com, .net or .org. If you’re appealing to an international audience, a generic TLD may serve you better. Of the generic TLDs .com is by far the most universally accepted and popular – making it the most valuable one to secure.
• You can buy multiple domain names: there’s nothing to stop you buying more than one domain to prevent others from registering them. You can then redirect or park the secondary domains so that they point to your main website. Another option is registering country specific domains to give yourself an online ‘presence’ in each country you do business in. You can then deploy a regionally tailored version of your website to each of those domains (the preferable option), or redirect them to a localised section on your main website.
• Keywords in a domain name can be beneficial: you may decide to incorporate one of your keyword phrases into your domain name. Opinion varies on the significance of this in terms of its impact on your search engine ranking, but it may help both search engines and users to establish what your site is about right from the start.