On 19/11/2007, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
I've generally had good results from 123-Reg for domain registration and DNS, so this one has surprised me.
Hasn't surprised me. Pipex/Webfusion have been reliably unreliable for a good number of months. Had enormous problems with 123-reg taking THREE months to answer a query over applying credits to a domain registration. Webfusion's VPS offerings and sales department are about as much good as a dog turd on toast.
What I have liked about them in the past is that generally I can do everything I need to easily and cheaply (including just letting them register the domain then use them to change the DNS settings to something under my control). I don't have the knowledge or resources to set up and manage multiple DNS away from 123-Reg, although managing one which I only really need to worry about in rare circumstances isn't so bad (if I have to take it down for a couple of days to move it to another server its no big deal unless it coincides with another outage).
I used to use a service called DNS Made Easy which for £18 per year allowed me to host up to 50 domains on four redundant, globally hosted, DNS servers. It also provided vanity nameservers, zone templates and everything else you could want. However, they began to get cocky during the renewal process and I've given them up.
I now just use Names.co.uk's nameservers (on the same network, so if that bites the dust I'm buggered) until I can either find somewhere with a clue and a decent range of features (there was one UK company whose web interface didn't work with anything other than Internet Explorer and the support guys hadn't a fecking clue that was the case).
Oh. I did rather like Gradwell.com's 20-domain DNS service too, but a bit pricey at 10 quid per month and the support wasn't as good as I was expecting.
Most 3rd party DNS providers I've looked at charge on a per-domain basis which would make migrating all the domains we currently manage a big expense for little paypack; a lot of our customers like to have a few dozen domains all pointing to the same place and with pretty much just "www" in the DNS (often not even MX records).
In theory it doesn't take too much resources to run a DNS server - primary or secondary. I'm contemplating doing it with VPSes (from reliable hosting providers - not some fly-by-night operation that simply leases managed VPSes like so many do).
The reason for me doing this? Much of the reasons above, but also I am a big(ish) supporter of Google Apps, and I spend a fair amount of time helping people trying to resolve their DNS issues with getting their domain to work with the bloody thing. By offering a redundant managed DNS service for them, it'll take away some of the hassles.
Regards,
Martyn