Glue records, what they are and when you need them

A glue record is an extra piece of DNS data that ties a nameserver's hostname directly to its IP address at the parent (registry) level. You need one whenever your nameservers live on the same domain they are supposed to serve, for example ns1.yourdomain.com answering for yourdomain.com. Without glue, resolvers hit a chicken-and-egg loop and your domain fails to resolve.

The circular lookup problem

Normal DNS delegation works because the parent zone tells resolvers which nameservers are authoritative for your domain. If those nameservers are named under some other domain, the resolver can look them up independently. The trouble starts when a nameserver's name lives inside the very zone it serves.

Imagine yourdomain.com is delegated to ns1.yourdomain.com. To find the IP of ns1.yourdomain.com, the resolver must query yourdomain.com. But to query yourdomain.com, it must already know the IP of ns1.yourdomain.com. That is the circular dependency. Glue breaks the loop: the parent .com registry hands out the nameserver's IP address alongside the delegation, so the resolver never has to ask the child zone for it.

When you actually need glue records

You do not need glue for most domains. It is required only in specific setups:

• You run your own nameservers named under the same domain, such as ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com serving example.com. These are called vanity or in-bailiwick nameservers.
• You are building a branded, private DNS infrastructure across many sites and want every zone to advertise its own ns1 and ns2 hostnames.

If your nameservers belong to a different domain, for example your host provides ns1.hostingdns.net, no glue is needed on your side. The parent of hostingdns.net already carries that glue, and your domain simply delegates to those external names.

How to create glue records

Glue lives at your domain registrar, not in your cPanel zone editor, because only the parent registry can publish it. The exact wording varies, but the flow is standard:

1. Log in to the account for your domain registration and open the domain's management page.
2. Find the section labeled Private Nameservers, Register Nameservers, Host Records, or Child Hosts.
3. Create a host such as ns1.yourdomain.com and assign it the IPv4 address of your server. Add an AAAA style entry if you also run IPv6.
4. Repeat for ns2.yourdomain.com with a second IP for redundancy.
5. Back on the domain settings, set the domain's nameservers to those same ns1 and ns2 hostnames.
6. Save and allow time for parent-zone propagation, which can take up to a day.

You still create matching A records for ns1 and ns2 inside your own zone so the child and parent agree, but the authoritative glue is the entry at the registry.

Verifying the glue

Query the parent nameservers directly and look for the address records served alongside the delegation. From a terminal:

dig +norecurse @a.gtld-servers.net yourdomain.com NS
dig ns1.yourdomain.com A

In the first answer, the ADDITIONAL section should list the IP addresses for your nameserver hostnames. If those IPs are present, the glue is in place. If the additional section is empty, the registry has no glue and resolution will fail until you register the host records.

Glue, dedicated IPs, and your DNS footprint

Running vanity nameservers on dedicated IP addresses keeps your DNS entirely under your own brand and control, which is useful when you manage many sites and want a clean, self-contained footprint. Note that glue records themselves are a resolution mechanism, not a ranking factor. If you plan to build branded nameservers across a portfolio, review our multiple Class C IP hosting and see the broader DNS and IP management guides. For terminology used throughout the DNS specifications, the IETF maintains an authoritative reference in RFC 9499. If you want help setting up private nameservers on your account, contact our team.