Is it possible to trick my computer into using my new DNS provider instead of the current nameserver specified with my registrar? I would like to test that the various subdomains etc work before switching name servers over.
I'm really hoping for something like the hosts file method for setting an IP for a domain.
The tools DNSCheck and Zonemaster have the ability to do that. In them, you can manually add the delegation information you are planning to introduce, and they will use that instead of what's live in DNS to perform their tests (Zonemaster is the successor to DNSCheck and Zonecheck).
If you want to run locally rather than use the web interface, you can install Zonemaster::CLI from CPAN (you'll need Perl version 5.14.2 or later). Source code for both DNSCheck and Zonemaster is available on Github. Both are BSD-licensed Open Source, and written in Perl.
Disclosure: I was the maintainer for DNSCheck for many years and wrote much of the test engine in Zonemaster, working on behalf of the Swedish top-level registry.
