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I run a domain parking service, let's call it domainparking.tld and users set their domain's NS to point to:

  • ns1.domainparking.tld
  • ns2.domainparking.tld

now the problem is ... few of these domains generate too much http traffic for me to handle, and I want to have Cloudflare handle these requests/domains.

In order for a domain to start using Cloudflare, they ask me to change domain's NS to be:

  • daisy.ns.cloudflare.com
  • eric.ns.cloudflare.com

but I don't have access to main domain's NS records, but I can set any records on my parking service.

Can I somehow redirect all requests to the Cloudflare's nameservers above ? What I tried was: I created a zone for this domain on my parking server and I only defined two records, both of type "NS" (the cloudflare ones above). That doesn't work from what I can tell. Is there another way to do this ?

adrianTNT
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1 Answers1

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This is called "Vanity Name Servers" or sometimes "Custom Name Servers." In essence, your nameservers ns1.domainparking.tld and ns2.domainparking.tld are the vanity servers. The ability to use vanity servers with a given DNS provider is subject to that DNS provider's own features. For example, as of the writing of this answer, Cloudflare only allows the use of vanity server on their Business and Enterprise tiers.

Source: https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/#compare-features (Scroll to "Compare All Features", click to expand all, then text search for Custom Nameservers) Once you get one of those plans, because of Cloudflare being... well, Cloudflare, you'd want to work with their support to get your servers acting as the vanity servers for your customer's domains.

Helpful Side Note: If you're on the business or enterprise plans for Cloudflare, you don't even need to use vanity name servers. On those tiers, as of the writing of this post, you can apparently point CNAMEs to Cloudflare without having the whole zone managed by their DNS.

Opportunistic side note: I currently work for a CDN service where you don't need to change your name servers or migrate zones, just the ability to create apex CNAMEs via ALIAS or ANAME records. So those types of services exist; you don't have to just focus on Cloudflare.

Wesley
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