I’m occasionally asked where people can obtain public zone data (the zone files themselves) via zone transfers (AXFR) from. Here are a few sources I’m aware of.
root zone
First of all, the root zone is obtainable out of band via the IANA Root Files site, in particular the Root Zone File. If all you need is a list of the 1500 Top-Level Domains get those by themselves.
RFC 8806 documents how to run a Root server local to a resolver, in other words, you can easily zone transfer the root zone. (See Appendix B on how to do that with BIND and Unbound, Knot Resolver, and even Windows Server.) On the command line, it’s as easy as
$ dig +noall +answer +noidnout +onesoa @f.root-servers.net . AXFR
You might also have a bit of fun (and maybe more suggestions) at determining the number of delegated ccTLD from a root zone transfer.
Estonia
Jaromir writes to mention Estonia (.ee) provides their zone via AXFR from @zone.internet.ee, and they document it here.
France
Stéphane Bortzmeyer writes to say that AFNIC publish the list of domains for France (.fr); the file you want is called A-NomsDeDomaineEnPointFr.zip and it expands into a CSV file with the domain name in the first column.
Slovakia
Slovakia (.sk) (also via Jaromir) have a downloadable copy of their zone as a CSV file.
Switzerland
SWITCH publish the .ch zone file, containing all (2.26M at my last count) delegated .ch domain names, but take note of terms. Access to the zone file (from a secondary server you create) requires a TSIG key which is published on that page.
Of course you can also scan this wonderful masterpiece by Antoine, and go with the times. :-)
Sweden and Niue
The Swedish Internet Foundation provides the latest .se and .nu zone files via AXFR from @zonedata.iis.se. The data for Sweden (.se) currently has 1.47 million and that of Niue (.nu) 250,000 delegations.
others
There are other TLD which make their zone available via zone transfer, but I’ve limited this article to those who do so officially and document the fact. If you know of others, kindly drop me a line, and I’ll gladly add them to this page.
As Jan reports, the following zones can be transferred from one (or more) of their authoritative NS; we’re not quite sure whether or not this is intentional: arpa, cv, er, gp, mw, sl, xn--mgbai9azgqp6j, and xn--ygbi2ammx. He has also found the following zone request pages:
- for NZ
- for PT
- lots of others