Hi,
I currently have a site hosted at HostMySite that I previously hosted myself.
The registrar is not HostMySite, but I was told when a new account is set up it is automatically added to the HOstMySite DNS servers whether they are the registrar or not.
Since that was the case I went ahead and added the three HostMySite DNS servers to the list of responsible DNS servers for my site, giving it a total of 5 including the two it already had.
What does having multiple DNS servers do exactly?
Would it make IP changes propagate to the web faster?
Thanks!
-Ken

Ken,

Nothing will propogate faster. Basically, by having more than one nameserver you're providing redundancy. If for some reason your primary nameserver cannot be reached, your request is routed to the secondary. If that cannot be reached, it routes down the chain until it doesn't have anything else to look for.

Since most people only have 2 servers specified (btw, which is usually more than enough), then they have two chances if network conditions are bad.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the info Josh.
Does HostMySite, which I'm just going to call HMS from now on because I'm lazy, allow you to do anything to your DNS records in their DNS servers? For instance if I decided I wanted gerbils.hamsterific.com to forward to www.rotten.com could that be set up by me or would I have to contact HMS(<--see isn't that better!) or is there a DNS manager somewhere in my account settings?

For that you'll need to contact HMS. Any medium works just the same here (phone, chat, email) as it's a very quick change. HMS actually gives you no means to manage DNS yourself. There are many good reasons for this, and it really doesn't take long at all (phone is of course the fastest way ), and then it should be active within 15 minutes of the change being made.

As Josh mentioned, at this time you are currently not able to manage your own DNS records. You can contact us with any changes you would like to your DNS records and we can make them for you.

We are currently working on a system to allow clients to change their own DNS information via the control panel, so you won't have to call us for those requests too much longer.

One thing to note about having multiple DNS servers, especially when they're at different hosting companies - make certain they have the same records!

most defineatly... or you'll confuse the interweb and all your requests will be sent to the darkest unrecoverable depths of cyberspace... muah ha ha...

DNS manager is soon to come, within a couple of months. Taking our time with this as a user can really hose their site doing their own DNS and then wonder what's happening.

There will be advanced and non-advanced sections.

Josh I believe the correct spelling is intarweb