I can't speak for the Windows or Mac versions of NSLOOKUP (they all seem to be different), but your basic GNU NSLOOKUP as implemented on most unices and NSLOOKUP on VM seem to work pretty much the same. You can get help for them by typing NSLOOKUP at the prompt, then typing a question mark at NSLOOKUP's ">" prompt. Generally the commands you'll use the most are set type=xxxx where xxxx can be A, MX, ANY, CNAME, etc. ANY returns whatever is cached for that host. server inet-host where inet-host is a FQDN, e.g., NS.SOMEHOST.EDU . This overrides the default which is your local name server. You use this if you get a response like "Authoritative answers can be found from:". exit quits NSLOOKUP. "quit" will be evaluated as a host name. :) There's a lot more, but I rarely need anything else. Nathan