So I work on a website that's picking up steam so I moved it to a new faster server which is running its own DNS with BIND. This server will therefore be the authoritative nameserver for mydomain.com.

It seems unusual and risky to me to have only one nameserver for my domain.com and yet I don't know why I feel this way. I hope to set up some other machine to do some slave DNS for me. I'm thinking something like this only a bit cuter, less goth, and a bit more useful for DNS.

Given that I have only one server running, if it goes down it goes down. It doesn't seem very helpful to have another machine out there pointing to a machine that isn't running. Perhaps some sage person could give me a quick reason why it's so important.

Also, who might be a good provider of slave dns?

Because when DNS breaks, everything else breaks. DNS redundancy is a good thing.

Even if all you have in your domain is one webserver, it's the difference between someone getting an error message that your server is down and getting the message that your domain doesn't exist.

I'm surprised that any registrar would even delegate a domain unless you provided at least two name servers.

As to where to get secondary dns service:
1. Your ISP
2. Anybody you know with suitably connectivity
3. Free DNS services (->Google)

Thanks for the response. Very helpful.

1) my ISP doesn't offer slave DNS
2) Any suitably connected person want to serve my slave DNS
3) I have been searching google for 'secondary dns' and there are millions of results and I'm not sure who is reputable and who offers real live slave DNS as opposed to some fixed DNS record.

Any suggestions for a reputable supplier of quality slave dns would be much appreciated.

I've used both the free and commercial tools at dyndns.com for several years without problem. Their website offers quite a range of services including secondary DNS. The various options are pretty well documented on the site.