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  1. #1

    * How accurate are DNS management services?

    Hello everyone,

    I would like to know more about the accuracy of DNS management services like DNSmadeaEasy.com (DME). I see that all their plans have a set number of queries. Well, I signed up with DME and created the DNS zone for 1 domain but haven't actually redirected my domain's DNS information to DME. This was in November 2011.

    Just now I logged into my DME account and saw query activity for November, December and January was 500-1,000 queries per month. I immediately sent a support ticket to DME to explain this but in the meantime I would like your feedback on this.

    Is it normal for DNS management service providers to miscount the number of queries?

    Thank you for your input.

  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by randolear View Post
    Hello everyone,

    I would like to know more about the accuracy of DNS management services like DNSmadeaEasy.com (DME). I see that all their plans have a set number of queries. Well, I signed up with DME and created the DNS zone for 1 domain but haven't actually redirected my domain's DNS information to DME. This was in November 2011.

    Just now I logged into my DME account and saw query activity for November, December and January was 500-1,000 queries per month. I immediately sent a support ticket to DME to explain this but in the meantime I would like your feedback on this.

    Is it normal for DNS management service providers to miscount the number of queries?

    Thank you for your input.
    I think I have similar issue before about trusting the figures particularly if it has some limits. But most reply that I've got here was..."You need to trust your provider".

    But if you think that this is inaccurate, try using other provider for a month or two then compare it. I will recommend Zerigo. Good luck pal
    Ask for Server IP & Nameservers IP to check if your reseller provider truly provides 100% white-label.

  3. #3
    I asked the exact same question before.
    They said that their own system queries itself on multiple nodes to make sure they're working. It counts towards your numbers though. They also said since it's not a big number, you shouldn't worry about it.

    Too lazy to dig up the exact support ticket though.
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  4. #4
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    We use Zerigo for our domains but they aren't accurate at all. Not only are they not accurate, but their tech support is useless. Since 8x8 bought the company, it is being managed streight from California (their HQ used to be in Colorado), and no one gives a damn about it anymore. The last time I contacted them on life chat it was last week asking what kind of 3rd party applications I would be able to use with their DNS REST API, and after keeping me waiting for over half an hour they guys on life chat said that he would have to email me an answer to my question. Well, it's been a week and I still have no clue what 3rd party application we can use with their REST API, how ever we will drop them very soon for the same reason you inquired about: accuracy.
    We get very little traffic on our domains being a new hosting company, yet we get about half a million queries counted every month. Our plan covers it, but it's about as far from accurate as it gets. Yes, their DNS service works, it's fast, but that's about it. If you need fast and knowledgeable support, look somewhere else. If you want accuracy, look somewhere else. If I where you, I would give CloudFlare a try, as they are more than just a DNS service. We are currently evaluating them to possibly offer their services to our customers.

    I hope this helps
    Take care,
    Marc
    Last edited by HostingBeam; 03-21-2012 at 12:51 AM.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Toratek View Post
    We use Zerigo for our domains but they aren't accurate at all. Not only are they not accurate, but their tech support is useless. Since 8x8 bought the company, it is being managed streight from California (their HQ used to be in Colorado), and no one gives a damn about it anymore. The last time I contacted them on life chat it was last week asking what kind of 3rd party applications I would be able to use with their DNS REST API, and after keeping me waiting for over half an hour they guys on life chat said that he would have to email me an answer to my question. Well, it's been a week and I still have no clue what 3rd party application we can use with their REST API, how ever we will drop them very soon for the same reason you inquired about: accuracy.
    We get very little traffic on our domains being a new hosting company, yet we get about half a million queries counted every month. Our plan covers it, but it's about as far from accurate as it gets. Yes, their DNS service works, it's fast, but that's about it. If you need fast and knowledgeable support, look somewhere else. If you want accuracy, look somewhere else. If I where you, I would give CloudFlare a try, as they are more than just a DNS service. We are currently evaluating them to possibly offer their services to our customers.

    I hope this helps
    Take care,
    Marc
    with regard to zerigo, that's been my recent experience as well. it bums me out. getting someone to answer any support query quickly has been really hit and miss. sometimes you get someone really fast, sometimes you don't hear back for a week if at all. i'm getting to the point now that i want to move my VPS and DNS services both off zerigo to a provider with support that cares.

    that being said, being off by +/- 100-1000 queries has been my experience with most DNS providers i've used. well, at least the ones that meter dns queries and actually tell you how many they've answered. (dyn doesn't show in their panel how many queries they've answered)

  6. #6
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    While we're at this, can anyone suggest a good GUI front end for BIND? I'm thinking about setting up our own DNS servers for our customers. We're already present in two data centers, so we can have some decent redundancy, and of course, we are planning to expand.

    Thank you,
    Marc

  7. #7
    Never use Zerigo.com
    They totally ignore support tickets.

    I have paid $99 for one year DNS service.

    Then i have noticed very strange amount of queries every month. I have been paying $25 every month for extra queries.
    Then I moved all my 60+ domains to Amazon Route53 and I was amazed of what i have found. Four of my top domains were still receiving queries to zerigo dns (the same pretty lagre amount). Two weeks passed but the amount of queries was still increasing. That was for sure false billing (I was paying for someone else's queries).
    I've just dropped my account.

    Never use their service.

  8. #8
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    @OP, DME's lowest plan allows 5 million queries. If you're seeing queries between 500 and 1000, you're talking about 0.02%. You're not incurring any extra charges either.

    Given the way this works, being accurate to within 0.02% is hardly worth saying anything about to be honest. If it ends up that you incur additional charges...that's a different story.

    Quote Originally Posted by Toratek View Post
    While we're at this, can anyone suggest a good GUI front end for BIND? I'm thinking about setting up our own DNS servers for our customers. We're already present in two data centers, so we can have some decent redundancy, and of course, we are planning to expand.

    Thank you,
    Marc
    While I've never used it myself, take a look at PowerDNS.
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  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by borasque View Post
    Never use Zerigo.com
    They totally ignore support tickets.

    I have paid $99 for one year DNS service.

    Then i have noticed very strange amount of queries every month. I have been paying $25 every month for extra queries.
    Then I moved all my 60+ domains to Amazon Route53 and I was amazed of what i have found. Four of my top domains were still receiving queries to zerigo dns (the same pretty lagre amount). Two weeks passed but the amount of queries was still increasing. That was for sure false billing (I was paying for someone else's queries).
    I've just dropped my account.

    Never use their service.
    fwiw, there are circumstances that could cause them to be answering queries for your domains even after delegating your zones to another provider. in my situation, i stopped using their dns platform and the following month, all of my provisioned domains indicated 0 queries answered by zerigo.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by randolear View Post
    Hello everyone,

    I would like to know more about the accuracy of DNS management services like DNSmadeaEasy.com (DME). I see that all their plans have a set number of queries. Well, I signed up with DME and created the DNS zone for 1 domain but haven't actually redirected my domain's DNS information to DME. This was in November 2011.

    Just now I logged into my DME account and saw query activity for November, December and January was 500-1,000 queries per month. I immediately sent a support ticket to DME to explain this but in the meantime I would like your feedback on this.

    Is it normal for DNS management service providers to miscount the number of queries?

    Thank you for your input.
    Been using DME as well for nearly 6 months now for a small fraction of my domains and I am under my quota of 10 million queries/month with avg 800-900K queries/month with peak month at 2.9 million queries in one month. I also use their DNS failover and monitoring so I am sure that contributes to the total DNS queries.

    But I don't think there is a way to verify those numbers ? Subscribed to this thread as I would be interested to know if there was a way.
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  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by m0unds View Post
    fwiw, there are circumstances that could cause them to be answering queries for your domains even after delegating your zones to another provider. in my situation, i stopped using their dns platform and the following month, all of my provisioned domains indicated 0 queries answered by zerigo.
    Even if i have changed provider one month ago? (all dns traces are confirming that new nameservers are in use)

    Those 4 domains were generating more than 50% of all my queries.
    Although these domains have very different traffic, they all were receiving approximately same amount of queries. In fact, one of those domains is just without traffic on it.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails zerigo2.png  

  12. #12
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    Be weary of services that charge per blocks of queries, but I could also say be weary of those that dont charge, unless you know someone who can vouch for their services.

    I had a client that userd UltraDNS in the past and was subsequently DoS attacked, and was asked to foot a $200k bill as a result.

    Services like Amazon's Route53 might be a good alternative, depending on what type of DNS services you need, and what your external dependencies are.
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  13. #13
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    One of the biggest problems with paid DNS can be if your no longer in control of the TTL, I have seen a few that force a very low TTL which causes a substantial increase in DNS queries, and therefore more money for them.

    Obviously if your using a fail over DNS service, then this isn't avoidable, however if your just looking for simple DNS there really is no need for it...
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  14. #14
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    The main thingg that they do I think is to control the DNS server clusters. It's quite normal where sometimes they do have some minor errors.

  15. #15
    I just moved over to DNS Made Easy and boy was I surprised to see 8 million queries in 3 weeks. I am on the Business plan so I have 10 million queries included but the way things are going it seems I might have to build my own Cpanel DNSONLY cluster. That OR increase the TTL.

  16. #16
    Not every dns provider is able to count queries because the dns software they are using is not capable of doing it. Some resort to some form of 95th percentile, or some other method of estimation.

    However, we can and do report query counts exactly and report it every day.
    edgedirector.com
    managed dns global failover and load balance (gslb)
    exactstate.com
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  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by randolear View Post
    I just moved over to DNS Made Easy and boy was I surprised to see 8 million queries in 3 weeks. I am on the Business plan so I have 10 million queries included but the way things are going it seems I might have to build my own Cpanel DNSONLY cluster. That OR increase the TTL.
    Mind sharing how low is your TTL and roughly what kind of traffic your sites are getting?

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