Migrating DNS domains/records from VPS.NET to Linode

As far as I can tell, @ and are interchangeable for the hostname in Linode DNS Manager. Hit the "Render" link at far bottom to see a BIND zonefile, the empty ones should shouw up as @s there.

Blank is correct.

Also, if you want to make sure everything is OK on linode's nameservers before moving over, use the dig command:

$ dig hoopycat.com @ns1.linode.com
(...)
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;hoopycat.com.            IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
hoopycat.com.        86400   IN  A   97.107.134.213
(...)

$ dig hoopycat.com mx @ns1.linode.com
(...)
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;hoopycat.com.            IN  MX

;; ANSWER SECTION:
hoopycat.com.        86400   IN  MX  10 mail.hoopycat.com.
(...)

Also check @ns2.linode.com, ns3, ns4, and ns5 to make sure those are well too.

Thanks, I also thought to check with dig soon after posting - thanks for the suggestion though.

Am happy to see that Linode have DNS service in London too!

Query time is great, so I have set ns5.linode.com as the main name server, followed by Neward/NS4 (which if I remember rightly still is the best option for Europe, among the other data centres), and then the others.

For what it's worth, there's no preference for authoritative nameservers… they're all equally likely to be chosen by a resolver. Same applies to having multiple A records for a name, etc.

A smart resolver will tend towards preferring the best-performing of the available nameservers, so stick all five in there.

Ah OK, good to know. I was always of the impression that the order had some meaning. I added all of them anyway, in the order I said earlier but I added all of them. But for users, for instance, in London, which one would be first choice? Would it be the London one?

London would be my first guess. Of course, someone's computer could be configured to query a nameserver in California (unlikely, but possible), in which case Fremont would probably be quicker. Either way, the difference isn't much worse than a tenth of a second.