Registrar and DNS Delegation

Registration and DNS are separate

A registrar manages domain registration rights, contacts, and renewal. Authoritative DNS hosts the zone records. You can buy a domain at any registrar and use Route 53 DNS without transferring registration — and Route 53 can also act as your registrar.

flowchart LR
  REG["Registrar<br/>domain example.com"] -- "NS delegation" --> TLD[".com registry<br/>parent zone"]
  TLD --> Z["Route 53 hosted zone<br/>4 awsdns name servers"]
  Z --> REC["Records<br/>A, Alias, MX, TXT"]
  U["Resolver<br/>on the Internet"] --> TLD
  U --> Z
  %% step REG: You register the domain and set its name servers at the registrar.
  %% step TLD: The registrar publishes those NS records in the parent .com zone.
  %% step Z: Route 53 gives every public hosted zone four name servers in different TLDs, such as .com, .net, .org and .co.uk.
  %% step REC: Your records live in the hosted zone.
  %% step U: Resolvers follow the delegation from the parent to Route 53, so records answer only after NS is updated.

Pointing a domain at Route 53

1. Create a public hosted zone for the exact domain (example.com).
2. Copy its four NS values from the zone.
3. Update delegation at the registrar (or the parent zone for a subdomain) to those four names.
4. Wait for the old NS TTL and parent cache to expire — often up to 48 hours for the parent.
5. Verify with dig NS example.com +short.

Creating a zone without changing NS does not send Internet queries to Route 53. Recreating a deleted zone gives different name servers, so the registrar must be updated again — a common cause of "my domain stopped working".

Delegating a subdomain

To let another team or account manage dev.example.com, create a hosted zone for dev.example.com and add an NS record named dev in the parent example.com zone with the child zone's four name servers. This is the one case where you add NS records inside a zone.

Do not edit the apex NS records inside the zone to “delegate” the parent; delegation must change at the registrar or parent zone. Keep the Route 53-created SOA and NS records unless you understand DNS delegation.

Registering with Route 53

When Route 53 is the registrar it creates a hosted zone automatically and sets the delegation. Turn on auto-renew and transfer lock, keep contact details current (the registrant email must be verified or the domain can be suspended), and enable privacy protection to hide personal contact data in WHOIS where the TLD supports it. DNSSEC signing can be enabled for the hosted zone and the DS record published through the registrar to protect against spoofed answers.

Costs

A hosted zone has a monthly fee plus per-query charges (Alias queries to AWS resources are free); domain registration is a yearly fee that depends on the TLD.

dig NS example.com +short checks public name servers. Compare them with get-hosted-zone to detect duplicate zones or incorrect delegation.

Traps: creating the zone but never updating NS at the registrar; deleting and recreating a zone and keeping the old NS; letting the domain expire.