An embodiment of the invention comprises a method and apparatus for providing dynamic name resolution services based on information stored and served in a root server. A multi-part reference to the name resolution server is stored on the root servers. By analyzing the reference to the name resolution server, the name resolution server is capable of dynamically generating a canonical name associated with a domain and/or a host name. The domain and/or host name may be further examined by network resource servers to determine further information about a requested resource.