Learn what the MISSING GLUE DNS error means, what causes it, and how to fix it with step-by-step troubleshooting instructions and tools.
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A glue record is a special A or AAAA record that a parent zone (like .com or .net) provides alongside an NS delegation to break a circular dependency. When your domain's nameservers are hosted on a subdomain of the domain they serve — for example, ns1.example.com serving DNS for example.com — a resolver cannot look up ns1.example.com without first knowing how to reach example.com. The glue record solves this by publishing the IP address of ns1.example.com directly in the parent zone's response.
When the glue record is missing, resolvers get stuck in an unresolvable loop: to find the authoritative servers for example.com, they need to look up ns1.example.com, but to look up ns1.example.com, they need to contact the authoritative servers for example.com. Resolvers handle this failure by returning SERVFAIL or by timing out entirely.
Glue records are mandatory only when the nameserver hostname falls within the zone it serves. Concretely:
example.com using nameservers ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com.example.com using nameservers ns1.registrar.com and ns2.registrar.com. Those nameservers belong to a different zone that can be resolved independently.Most domain registrars call this feature "host records" or "registered hosts." Before you can set ns1.example.com as a nameserver for example.com, you must first register the IP address for ns1.example.com with the registrar. This registration is what creates the glue record in the parent TLD zone.
Use dig to trace the delegation path manually:
dig +trace example.com NSIf the TLD nameservers return your NS records without accompanying A records in the Additional section, glue is missing. You can also verify by querying the TLD servers directly:
dig NS example.com @a.gtld-servers.netLook at the Additional section of the response. If it is empty when your NS records point to hostnames under your own domain, the glue records were not registered.
The fix must be performed at your domain registrar, not in your DNS zone file. Log in to your registrar's control panel and find the section for "Host Records," "Child Nameservers," or "Private Nameservers." Create host registrations for each nameserver hostname, providing its IP address. Once saved, the registrar submits these records to the parent TLD registry. Propagation of glue records through the TLD zone typically takes 12-48 hours.
After creating the glue records, verify them with dig or use the ReviewMyDNS propagation checker to confirm the nameserver delegation is resolving correctly from multiple global locations. If your domain was completely unreachable due to the missing glue, resolution should recover once the TLD zone propagates the new glue entries.
The exact steps to register a glue record vary by registrar, but the underlying process is the same at all of them:
ns1) and its IP address.If your registrar's panel has no option to register host records or child nameservers, contact their support team. This option is only relevant if you operate your own authoritative nameservers — if you use Cloudflare, AWS Route 53, or any third-party DNS provider, their nameservers are in a different zone and glue records are handled by the DNS provider automatically.
A missing glue record often produces a SERVFAIL error at the resolver level, or a Lame Delegation if the nameserver is reachable but refuses to answer authoritatively. If your domain was working and suddenly stopped, check for recent changes to your nameserver configuration. See the full DNS error reference for causes and fixes for all common DNS error types, and use the DNS propagation checker to verify resolution from 50+ global servers after your fix is applied.