How to use Nslookup
Nslookup is defined as an administrative command line tool that is used for troubleshooting as well as testing DNS servers. Nslookup is installed alongside the TCP/IP protocol through a control panel. In order to know how to use Nslookup you should keep in mind several things. The first is that the TCP/IP protocol requires to be installed while running as Nslookup.exe on the system. It is also important to note that a single DNS server is at least required to be defined in the field of the Service Searching Order of the DNS tab in the Properties page of Microsoft TCP/IP.
You should also consider that nslookup always devolves the name that is derived from the latest context. This is due to the falling of the name queries to be fully qualified results in the query that are being attached to the present context. The present DNS settings which are att.com are example of this when they are performing queries on microsoft website with the initial query going out as microsoft att because of it being unqualified. This can be an inconsistent behavior in some cases and this is in regard to various other vendor nslookup versions.
Nslookup.exe can be run either in non interactive and also interactive modes with the non interactive mode being the better one and this is because one data piece to be returned. It may also be started in the interactive mode which can be done by typing "nslookup" on the command prompt. Typing "?" or "help" on the command prompt and this is to be able to generate lists of obtainable commands. You can also press CTRL+C in order to be able to interrupt interactive commands. In order to exit an interactive mode that can be followed by returning to the command prompt you should type "exit" on the command prompt. Nslookup.exe also allows for several other options by running at the prompts set command.
You should type "set all" on the command prompt in order for you to be able to have these options. You can as well look up for different types of data within the name space of the domain which can be done using the set type command or set query type of the command prompt. It will always result in an authoritative answer if you make the initial query for remoter names and at the same time subsequent queries will result to non authoritative answers. Initial querying of the remote host also results in the respective DNS server contacting the authoritative DNS server for that specific domain.
You can also query directly from different name servers and here server commands or lserver should be used to switch to this name server. Lserver commands make use of the local servers with a specific aim of getting the server's address. Nslookup command can be used to find out the exact IP address that is resolved from domain name. Reverse DNS lookup command is useful in that it helps to check whether the DNS servers set in Microsoft Windows work properly. If for any reason they do not work properly a webpage will not be able to be displayed on your browser and this is because the domain names will not be translated into IP addresses.
About the Author
This article touched the basics of the topic. I have 2 more resources related to the above. They are how to use nslookup and reverse dns. Do consider reading them.