Ask HN: Why use a DNS service? (e.g. DnsMadeEasy)

Hey Guys,<p>I hope it wasn't lame to comment, but I saw a tweet about this question and figured I'd give you guys my jam. I just wanted to note that the company I work for (Dyn Inc.) has two DNS offerings, so I'm constantly talking about outsourcing DNS with people daily, so I figured I'd give you my understanding.<p>We have two DNS platforms. DynDNS for consumers (you've probably heard of that one given its popularity)... and Dynect for enterprises (not as well known but it is a top tier provider in the DNS space).<p>With outsourced DNS, you can do all kinds of cool things that would be hard to do with Rackspace or in house because of the programming/specialties of those companies etc....with our Dynect Platform...there are some really neat advance features like active failover (redirect traffic to a back up server), round robin load balancing, weighted load balancing, and global server load balancing that can make DNS queries get answered faster, while ensure they get answered.<p>So if you are using Rackspace for hosting, and you want to load balancing without buying hard ware...with outsourced providers...you can do it at a much more affordable rate.<p>Dyn has been fortunate enough to have great engineers that have designed a network that actually has experienced 100% uptime on both DynDNS and Dynect... and to help work with more start ups, we just came out with DynectSMB which is our anycasted enterprise platform stripped down without advance features for start ups.<p>Hope this didn't seem like a pitch for Dyn...but most other providers can do a lot of these tricks, I just know for fact Dyn can do them the best. I may seem bias though since I work here..but we definitely care about the awareness of DNS increasing. It is an important layer of the internet that is often forgotten.<p>If you guys want to read more on it... check out <a href="http://dnsissexy.com" rel="nofollow">http://dnsissexy.com</a><p>Sorry if this made the forum too businessish. I just wanted to plug advance features with outsourced providers... (from a bias perspective haha)

I use DNSMadeEasy because an IT guy I really respect suggested it to me, but as a developer these are my benefits:<p>- Ability to do 5 second TTL<p>- Almost 100% uptime (until a few months ago it was 100%)<p>- Ability to change registrars and hosting providers without worry.<p>- Registrars can be slow to transfer a domain DNSMadeEasy Never is (unless you set a high TTL).

There's no contradiction. I recommend using more than one service, if practical.<p>I have found, however, that hosting companies tend to cater for the less technical user, whereas what I usually want is to run my own "stealth" master and have the public providers have a quick turnaround on NOTIFYs.<p>The ideal choice is a provider with both a good web interface, for when one is too small to run ones own master, as well as good no-frills slave service, for when one has grown to need it.

As well as DnsMadeEasy there is also DeadSimpleDNS, which I have been using with some success recently.<p>As with the other comments; I think the advantage is having DNS disconnected from the domain registrar. Plus such businesses are focused on providing DNS services only - so I suppose the theory is better service.

I've experienced my registrar's DNS servers going flaky or downright not working for a full working week. It's fine to rely on them for a project that hasn't gone big, but once you're making decent money, I'd really advise spending the $howmanydollars/year insurance on a proper DNS service.

For low volume sites the benefit to using hosted DNS usually comes in an improved interface, an API or other features that make managing DNS easier than it would be through a hosting services DNS management interfaces. In many cases it's not worth the effort, YMMV.<p>For higher volume sites there are more reasons to move to hosted DNS. Specifically hosted DNS services may provide higher redundancy, SLAs, Anycast and GeoDNS and other services that are designed to improve DNS response times and reduce the likelihood of a DNS failure.<p>In the end it in both cases it comes down to specialization, and I think, although I have no concrete evidence of it, that people often prefer a specialized service as opposed to a general service.

DNS services allow you to use a nice little interface to set DNS records. Some registrars (like GoDaddy) have a built-in management system that lets you specify A and CNAME records within your web browser.<p>Short of this, however, a lot of people would rather use a service that implements similar functionality than have to manage a BIND server themselves. Other than possible dynamic DNS issues (not really a problem for professionally hosted web sites), there aren't really any <i>features</i> that DNS services offer; it's a pretty simple concept in general, after all (host name request yields corresponding IP).

I use DNSPark.net, my host doesn't include DNS (afaik) and while I could run the dns servers myself I don't want the extra load / responsibility keeping that part of a very high volume site running.... especially when it's so cheap to let someone else do it.

All my DNS is hosted with my domain registrar, Gandi. They allow short TTL's and have very good uptime. They also give me full control, I can edit my BIND config.<p>Can anyone see reason for me to switch?

One reason is performance. If you need your website to be fast, DNS lookup is yet another thing that can be optimized.