i need to setup name servers for the first time.... help

do i need to register domain names with nominet how do they know that they are name servers does it matter ?

Gulp

There are lots of things that you may need to do but you've not said enough about what you have or haven't done so far.

eg,

have you got bind (or alternative) installed and working on your server?

Have you got a secondary server available?

You'll need an IP address for each server.

"do i need to register domain names with nominet how do they know that they are name servers does it matter ? "

Nominet don't perform any checks on the DNS server when you assign a dns server to a domain. ie you can use any url that maps to the IP address of the primary dns server.

If you want to have a domain served by a name server based on that domain eg domain.co.uk using ns1.domain.co.uk then you should submin the name server and it's ip address to nominet when you change the DNS servers via their modify forms. (Your local Nominet member will be able to do that, or see my sig if you don't have one :-) )

If you're looking to host .coms etc on the dns server then you'll need to register the name and IP address of the DNS server with NSI
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/makechanges/itts/host will allow you to do this.

If you try and set a dns server for .com that isn't registered correctly it'll probably fail. When you've registered it you'll be able to check it like this....

http://www.crsnic.net/cgi-bin/whois?whois_nic=ns1.nsnoc.com&type=nameserver