NS lookup - nameserver records
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What an NS record is
NS records name the servers that hold the actual, authoritative answers for a domain's DNS zone - every other record type (A, MX, TXT, and so on) ultimately comes from one of these servers, or from a resolver caching what one of them returned.
Why there is usually more than one
DNS is designed around redundancy at this exact layer: a domain typically lists two or more nameservers, often run by different providers or in different networks, so the zone stays resolvable even if one nameserver is unreachable.
What changing nameservers actually does
Pointing a domain at a new set of nameservers (at the registrar) is how a domain moves its DNS to a different provider entirely - after that, whoever controls those nameservers controls every record the domain resolves to, until they are changed again.
Related tools
See the authoritative DNS checker roadmap tool for comparing what each nameserver itself returns, or DNS lookup for the domain's other records.
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