Hi,
Obviously name server reduncancy is quite important, so heres what i propose:-

We provide seconday nameserver for you, in exchange for you doing the same for us?

The server that would provide this service is hosted in San Francisco data centre.

Any takers,

Regards,

Joe Nestor.

formerly everydns.com offers that. Give them a donation and use them as your secondary name server. (A big donation would be nice, as they're really cool guys!)

I'm using backupdns.com for off-site secondary dns management.

But they require more then just a donation :)

Another option is to get an virtual dedicated server and setup a secondary name server on it. Cagedtornado for example offer virtual servers for $20/month. They are very friendly. They compiled and installed bind for me. You need their help for it since you dont get "real" root access.

/len

Originally posted by axialhosting
Hi,
Obviously name server reduncancy is quite important, so heres what i propose:-

We provide seconday nameserver for you, in exchange for you doing the same for us?

The server that would provide this service is hosted in San Francisco data centre.

Any takers,

Regards,

Joe Nestor.

mydomain.com is free and easy to use.

But I know this has been mentioned a lot and always causes a long drawn out 'discussion'... but I still can't see the need or desire to have outside secondary dns. If the site is mirrored on another system maybe I can see that but if you run dns off the server that the host itself is hosted on, and dns is not working.. then more than likely the site is not going to be working no matter what because of likely problems with the entire server or network. So how would have dns from an outside source help if the server is down or network down?

Originally posted by Revelation
formerly everydns.com offers that. Give them a donation and use them as your secondary name server. (A big donation would be nice, as they're really cool guys!)

I believe you mean www.everydns.net.

Peter

Read the anouncement honey buns :)

Originally posted by rastoma

but I still can't see the need or desire to have outside secondary dns. If the site is mirrored on another system maybe I can see that but if you run dns off the server that the host itself is hosted on, and dns is not working.. then more than likely the site is not going to be working no matter what because of likely problems with the entire server or network. So how would have dns from an outside source help if the server is down or network down?

I have been saying exactly that in some discussions here before. Someone told me then that the error message will be different, kind of like 'That site exists, but is unavailable right now' instead of 'that site is nonexistent'.

I didn't buy that argument and I have no problems running primary and secondary on the same box/in the same datacenter.

Originally posted by ASPCode.net


I have been saying exactly that in some discussions here before. Someone told me then that the error message will be different, kind of like 'That site exists, but is unavailable right now' instead of 'that site is nonexistent'.

I didn't buy that argument and I have no problems running primary and secondary on the same box/in the same datacenter.

Thank you!!! :)

Originally posted by rastoma
dns is not working.. then more than likely the site is not going to be working no matter what because of likely problems with the entire server or network.

What if the problem it with the DNS server itself (software)? An error in the config file or even it just crashed.
If DNS is down, and you do not remember a server's IP (and do not have it with you), then you can not even do a trace route.

Originally posted by rastoma


Thank you!!! :)

I didn't believe in an off-site secondary dns server either, until I read something somewhere. What they said was that a mailserver will reject mail immediately if it cannot find the MX record for the domain the mail was sent to and if it CAN find the MX record, it will try for a couple of ours to reach the server instead of just giving back an error message.
I am not sure if this is really true as the website this text was on offered non-free secondary dns services :) but I can image it being true...

Originally posted by ASPCode.net


I have been saying exactly that in some discussions here before. Someone told me then that the error message will be different, kind of like 'That site exists, but is unavailable right now' instead of 'that site is nonexistent'.

I didn't buy that argument and I have no problems running primary and secondary on the same box/in the same datacenter.

#1: Secondary/Slave name servers use the same information as the primary (or it should) for backup. If the primary is too slow, down or has issues, the secondary will pick up. If the secondary houses the same errornous data or has some issue with the zone file, the secondary can have this same issue. Now you're out of luck.

#2: Any decent setups will not run the name service on one system (the same system as the sites), so any issues involved with one, won't affect the other. I.e., a server with the web sites, a server for the primary name server an a server for the secondary name server. If one of the name servers goes down, you're fine. if the secondary goes down too, you're not. If an additional slave name server is up, you're still fine.

#3: "Fault tolerance". More than one name server means faster by offloading the other.

#4: There's a difference between inaccessible/unreachable and nonexistant.

"RFC 1281 3.3. A Myth Exploded"

An argument is occasionally made that there is no need for the domain name servers for a domain to be accessible if the hosts in the domain are unreachable. This argument is fallacious.

+ Clients react differently to inability to resolve than inability to connect, and reactions to the former are not always as desirable.

+ If the zone is resolvable yet the particular name is not, then a client can discard the transaction rather than retrying and creating undesirable load on the network.

+ While positive DNS results are usually cached, the lack of a result is not cached. Thus, unnecessary inability to resolve creates an undesirable load on the net.

+ All names in the zone may not resolve to addresses within the detached network. This becomes more likely over time. Thus a basic assumption of the myth often becomes untrue.

Then there's the query or delayed email delivery vs. email bouncing and not trying again... not to mention caching issues that can arise and cause major problems if it thinks it just doesn't exist.

Be sure to check out http://www.merit.edu/internet/documents/rfc/rfc2182.txt if you never have.

Originally posted by Tim_Greer
Be sure to check out http://www.merit.edu/internet/documents/rfc/rfc2182.txt if you never have.

Wow, thanks for the info!

Thanks for the info Tim.

Still, at least for me, I have never had any DNS issues other than when I have rebooted the server - which means the website isn't accessible either.

The same for your other arguments, while right in theory I think in real life it has very little effect / happens close to never.

At least to me, I think there are sure other more important areas where a webhost should put their effort in, and the wording yoiur are using "Any decent setups..." seems a little strong to me.

Hi, I guess I wasn't clear about what I said.

That I had meant in regards to any decent set up for a web host, is to _not_ run both the primary and secondary on one system and also run it on the same system as the sites. I.e., all three on the same server. This has far, far more potential for problems. If any one of those aspects has an issues, they are all affected. I couldn't imagine how nervous I'd feel about running it all on one server.

Again, there's reasons for the secondary server, and that might be better off the same network, but if your network never goes down, then it's not an issue. Just don't run it all on one system is all. If your network goes down, you risk a lot to be lost in the time it takes for it to go back up, and if anyone's ISP thinks it's nonexistent, it can think that even when it's back up... for more than just minutes or hours for enough people to matter.

I see a lot of people talk about a lot of aspects of networking, computers, programming, etc. as it' all theory or opinions. This is not always true. Thinking something works, so it's just as good as some other method, is not a theory or fact, it's an opinion. There's reasons for certain setups and rules, and there's reasons for the RFC's too. Currently there's better ways to do things. Sure, some of it's "if this happens, you'll be okay", not as much as it is "in theory, you should be okay then" -- no, it's fact that you'll be covered from those issues and many more. I'm not trying to come off the wrong way, but while you "think" it doesn't make any difference in "real life", these issues are real and this suggestion is for a real reason, proven and effective. Of course this is trivial for some people and of course it's something people shouldn't worry about too much, compared to other things that are more important.

However, if you run the web server, the primary and secondary all on one server you can (and likely will) have a lot more issues, risks of downtime and connection problems over a set up that has systems dedicated to DNS only. Don't get me wrong, it's better to have the primary on the web server, and have an additional server as a slave, rather than nothing at all, but the master and slave one server is not good. I've seen it cause problems a lot of times for a lot of people. If you want to risk it (I'm not saying you run it all on one server), that's fine, and I'm not clear on what you're doing that you think is okay, but for the sake of other viewers, they should not think that it's actually okay to run it all on one server, and that when someone states reasons why, it's not always just some theory they are posting. Thanks for listening...

Originally posted by T_E_O


I didn't believe in an off-site secondary dns server either, until I read something somewhere. What they said was that a mailserver will reject mail immediately if it cannot find the MX record for the domain the mail was sent to and if it CAN find the MX record, it will try for a couple of ours to reach the server instead of just giving back an error message.
I am not sure if this is really true as the website this text was on offered non-free secondary dns services :) but I can image it being true...

Now... if this is true then I will have to change my viewpoint on it then.