Mac OS X 10.5 Help
Testing your DNS server
Use Network Utility to view information provided by your Domain Name System (DNS) server.
Your DNS server converts Internet names to IP addresses. If you get a message such as “server not found” from your web browser when you try to visit a website, your computer may be unable to contact a DNS server. You may have entered the wrong DNS server address in your Network preferences or your DNS server may be having problems. To test, try converting a name to an address using Network Utility.
To test your DNS server:
Open Network Utility, located in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder.
Click Lookup and choose “Default information” from the pop-up menu.
Type a domain name address (for example, www.apple.com) or a numerical IP address and click the Lookup button.
To find out which DNS server you should be using, check with your ISP or network administrator.
For help interpreting the results, or to see how you can use the underlying nslookup or dig commands to see more DNS information, open the Terminal application and type:
man dig