Frankly, I can't imagine why people in their right mind would use registrar's DNS.

Because (for me, at least) it is so much easier to have my own...

How do you go about having your own DNS servers? Presumably, to compete with the big boys, you'd need T1 line and geographical diversity both within US and worldwide for redundancy. Isn't this beyond the budget of the common or garden "man in the street"? Or is there a service out there to provide this? Wouldn't anything less be inferior? What software do you use as the DNS server? How much does it cost to run your DNS servers?

I still don't see why people are using their left mind if they use their registrar's DNS servers?

Well, you don't necessarily need a t1 to operate your own dns servers. You probably don't even need a t1, because of the minimal amount of bandwidth each query uses.

What you need:

1 or 2 Servers

At least 2 ip addresses in the set to operate your dns servers

A copy of some linux/bsd operating system, you can also run windows, but I'm not familiar with windows dns server software. I prefer freeBSD because of the easy operatability of the ports sytem.

A domain name

On your linux or bsd operating system, you'll need to install a copy of Bind 9. You can get that from http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sw/bind/ or in the freebsd ports system, /usr/ports/dns/bind9/

From there, you need to install, and config it.

You can also configure a private dns server on your home network, using the same software, and configuring bind to listen on private network addresses like 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2. Then, configure your home machines to query your home dns servers. That is free.

There are dns providers. www.ultradns.com is a big one. There is also everydns.net, and afraid.org .

What are you wanting to do? Host your site's dns? Host your connection's dns servers? Give us a little idea.

Well basically I'm intrigued by Stan's comment that nobody in their right mind would use your registrar's DNS servers. Why is it so important not to use your registrar's servers? what are the advantages, and how much is the cost?

I'm not really knowledgeable about DNS servers, but if the argument is persuasive enough I'd want to run my own DNS server (as an alternative to using my registrar's DNS server) for all my parked domains.

The advantage is one, really. *TOTAL CONTROL*. There are numerous disadvantages though:


costs
not for newbies
your personal involvement to keep them clean and secure


All of these aren't of any importance for me personally as I own a hosting company...

P.S. Stu, my remark wasn't 'registrar's DNS vs. your own'. It was rather 'registrar's vs. hosting company's'... :) But whatever... ;)

So your comment was why use Registrar's DNS servers, when you can use Hosting's DNS Servers? I don't see what is the difference? Surely eNom's, or any large registrar would have better DNS service than some tinpot hosting company.

Stu, there still are few drawbacks against using anything but hosting company's DNS.

Most importantly, hosters have a bad practice to change IPs and tell nobody, assuming all are using their DNSes. I can tell this from our own (recent, quite painful and infact, very wrong) practice when we did just that...

Secondly, you still need some knowledge to work with third party's DNSes. A, CNAME, MX should mean at least *something* to you.. You must agree that they don't mean anything for 99.9% of the population. :)

I fully agree that eNom has WAY better DNS system than MOST of hosting companies. However, there is no real need to have 6 nameservers, if tinpot hosting company has a server which is dead... :)

I've only ever used 2 hosting companies and never encountered this problem. Maybe because I prefer to use an exclusive ip address, not shared.

I would have to refresh my memory on A, CNAME, and MX records before using them :) Which I'm just about to do for 1 domain :( Yep agree they wouldn't mean much to most people.

So the conclusion is... using your registrar's DNS servers can be a good thing? ;)

I've only ever used 2 hosting companies and never encountered this problem. Maybe because I prefer to use an exclusive ip address, not shared.

I would have to refresh my memory on A, CNAME, and MX records before using them :) Which I'm just about to do for 1 domain :( Yep agree they wouldn't mean much to most people.

So the conclusion is... using your registrar's DNS servers can be a good thing? ;)
Using the registrar's dns servers... It will probably be fine, but you are sacrificing a lot of the control aspects, and there may possibly be a speed issue, depending on how many accounts are being hosted on the dns server.

A, cname, and MX records are pretty easy to learn.

domain.com. IN A 62.0.0.1
domain.com. IN MX 10 your.mail.server.com.
alias.domain.com. IN CNAME domain.com.

I believe the Bind9 package installs some example templates, too.