Looking up Google Cloud DNS records (nslookup) directly

Question

I'm in the process of testing GC DNS and have created zones and records. However, doing nslookup (windows/command line) times out when querying assigned Google NS directly:

> www.some_domain_A_record.com.
Server:  ns-cloud1.googledomains.com
Addresses:  2001:4860:4802:32::6e
          216.239.32.110

DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds.
*** Request to ns-cloud-e1.googledomains.com timed-out

Does anyone have any advice/input on this?

Notes:

• I am only using Cloud DNS for this project (no GCE/GAE/VM, etc.), essentially "just DNS". I'm looking to migrate from some existing DNS (only) provider to Google cloud DNS

• This means resources (A, CNAME, MX, etc.) aren't necessarily related to any GC hosted app or service (some could be - e.g. Google Apps/Work, etc.). In other words "typical" DNS zone/records.

• This is for an existing/live domain/zone

• I have not made any changes at the registrar level (I'm testing first) and querying the google ns assigned for the zone directly

To SO community:
Completely understood that this isn't a programming question. Its just that this is the "Bronze" level support area for Google.

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Update

Using Mac terminal actually succeeds

> server
Default server: ns-cloud1.googledomains.com
Address: 216.239.32.106#53
> gcloud-test.some_domain_I_have.com.
Server:     ns-cloud1.googledomains.com
Address:    216.239.32.106#53

gcloud-test.some_domain_I_have.com  canonical name = the_right_target.com.
Name:   the_right_target.com
Address: 1.2.3.4

Will dig some more, seems something to do with Windows nslookup..weird...it's not some firewall, I can nslookup some other domain using whatever specific (or public) name server.

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Update 2

Getting weirder - Windows (10 not that it should matter) on same Mac (vm/parallels) above works fine as well...

Update 3

As of today 9-24-2015 it seems the odd behavior on Windows nslookup (interactive mode) when querying your assigned Google ns directly is resolved.

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Bottom line: All's good and running quite smoothly! To the Google Cloud I go :)

On (all*) Windows - it just seems that if you have/want to query your assigned Google NS directly, you have to do nslookup in non-interactive mode (aka "one liner") as shown below. You'll do this if you want to check/query resources before DNS propagation (after which, you don't really need to query your assigned NS directly).

Alternatively, you could nslookup interactive mode if you use the IP address of your assigned Google NS (sample also below).

*"all Windows" - meaning host/pc and OS. As above, Windows on Mac (VM/Parallels) is strangely unaffected by this weirdness - you can use nslookup interactive mode and query your ns directly just fine...

Mac/OSX terminal is fine/unaffacted

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Partial answer, scoped to Windows:

To make it work,

• use nslookup in non-interative mode: nslookup name-of-resource the-google-ns
  e.g. nslookup foo.com ns-cloud1.googledomains.com
  
  or
  

• use the IP address of the google ns in interactive mode:

  c:\nslookup
  > server 216.239.32.106
  Default Server:  ns-cloud-a1.googledomains.com
  Address:  216.239.32.106
  
  > the_resource_to_lookup
  

As to "why", I'll defer to network folk - haven't worn that hat in years -seems something to do with PTR/reverse lookup, but that's just a guess...

Answer 1

Looking at your inquiries, on your Windows you're using ns-cloud-e1.googledomains.com as the name server, however on your Mac you're using ns-cloud1.googledomains.com which is ns-cloud-a1.googledomains.com.

If both inquiries are for the same zone, then time-out on the first nslookup inquiry makes sense. Your workaround used a correct DNS server for the nslookup inquiry.

The solution is modifing your Windows DNS settings from ns-cloud-e1.googledomains.com to ns-cloud-a1.googledomains.com (same DNS settings of your Mac).

Using the Developers Console, under Cloud DNS you can verify what DNS servers your zone is associated to.