svlug-secondary_dns

This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.



From: "David E. Weekly" <david@weekly.org>
To: "Aaron T Porter" <atporter@primate.net>,
Subject: Re: [svlug] secondary dns
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:11:22 -0800

EveryDNS.net

Free. Open Source-based. Community-supported. Four points-of-presence, soon
to be eight.

===

Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:39:08 -0800
From: J C Lawrence <claw@kanga.nu>

On Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:11:22 -0800 
David E Weekly <david@weekly.org> wrote:

> EveryDNS.net Free. Open Source-based. 

Not quite.  Its based on DJB's tinydns.

===

From: "Aaron T Porter" <atporter@primate.net>
To: "David E. Weekly" <david@weekly.org>
Cc: <svlug@svlug.org>
Subject: Re: [svlug] secondary dns

On Fri, Jan 18, 2002 at 01:11:22PM -0800, David E. Weekly wrote:
> EveryDNS.net
>
> Free. Open Source-based. Community-supported. Four points-of-presence,
> soon to be eight.


DJB's software doesn't meet the Open Source definition. I'd prefer
not to use it.

===

From: "David E. Weekly" <david@weekly.org>
To: "J C Lawrence" <claw@kanga.nu>
Cc: "Aaron T Porter" <atporter@primate.net>,
Subject: Re: [svlug] secondary dns 
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 14:09:23 -0800

JC,

As surely as the wind blows, you're entitled to your own feelings about the
utility of such a system, but the 3500+ accounts, 1600+ domains, and 5600+
DNS records in EveryDNS seem to indicate that somebody at least found such a
service useful. =)

It's DNS registration + DNS hosting + Net services (web+other things) that
make a 1-2-3 combo that might actually be useful for people. Myself, I'm
focusing on providing infrastructure for individuals, non-profits, and Open
Source projects with my California Community Colocation Project:
http://communitycolo.net/. (Incidentally, it may be the first non-profit in
the world to focus exclusively on providing colocated Internet services to
non-profits.)

Since I'm friends with EveryDNS's founder, I'd be happy to pass back any
constructive feedback you might have on their services.

===

To: Aaron T Porter <atporter@primate.net>
Cc: svlug@svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] secondary dns 
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 14:26:20 -0800
From: J C Lawrence <claw@kanga.nu>

On Fri, 18 Jan 2002 14:03:11 -0800 
Aaron T Porter <Aaron> wrote:

> I would disagree. Many of the free/cheap alteratives are stinky. 

I can't comment on how many suck, or what the percentage is (I
haven't used such a service for several years now), however minimal
poking about search engines suggests that its a well populated space
which in turn suggests a standard market: nost vendors suck at least
somewhat and there are a relative few really good sources.

As previously mentioned EasyDNS is ~$25 per annum which seems cheap
enough to be almost ignorable, especially given the value-adds on
their service (geographically distributed servers, secondary MXing,
etc) for a noticeably high quality service.  They don't however do
DynDNS (which has more vendors than I can shake a stick at).
Secondary.com dominates the free secondary name server business --
enough that the lists I'm on devoted to community/public DNS issues
have near died.  

> I prefer rely on friends, but not everyone has the luxury of a
> rolodex full of unix admins with reliable personal systems. 

I used to rely on friends but I found the unreliable -- not because
they were poor friends, but because the moved house, moved servers,
had other people with root on their boxes who didn't know about the
arrangement, just forgot about it, etc.  So I went the $25/year
route -- cheap insurance.

> Tack onto that the growing prevalance of broadband pipes with
> dynamic ips, and it starts to sound even better.  I really like
> what EveryDNS is doing, just not how they're going about it.

Oh, I don't dislike it or even complain about it, just question its
value.


===

Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 17:00:09 -0600
From: David Ulevitch <davidu@everydns.net>
To: svlug@svlug.org
Subject: [svlug] Responses to criticisms and questions

Hello svlug'ers,

A couple of you passed on this thread about everydns and I just wanted
to take a moment of your time to respond.

Aaron T. Porter writes:

>       I would disagree. Many of the free/cheap alteratives are stinky. I
> prefer rely on friends, but not everyone has the luxury of a rolodex full
> of unix admins with reliable personal systems. Tack onto that the growing
> prevalance of broadband pipes with dynamic ips, and it starts to sound
> even better.

I agree that most of the alternatives are "stinky" which is why I
started my project.  A majority of our users are on cable, homeDSL or
some other sort of non-business line.  However, it is interesting to
note that there is a sizeable number of users who use us for their
webhosted domains simply for the fact they don't want to rely on some
company (either the new one or the old one) to do dns updates for them
when they change companies.

>       I really like what EveryDNS is doing, just not how they're going
> about it.

You say that as if I've done something wrong.  I haven't.  I use
TinyDNS because it's source is open and I can manage the code base
however I want with no restrictions.  I'm fully aware of why I will
never find DJB's code on the main/ tree of my favorite debian mirror
but because it's secure, stable, fast and free I choose it over the
Buggy Internet Name Daemon.  I'm a big fan of Opensource and use it
everyday, however it isn't like I can send patches to ISC for bind.
Also, in case you aren't aware, development for bind9 is behind closed
doors.  What DNS daemon do you use? (MaraDNS? I doubt it)

_END_

J C Lawrence writes:

> Oh, I don't dislike it or even complain about it, just question its
> value.

Okay, that's fine.  You are more then welcome to send me your IPs and
I'll just add you to our ingress and egress firewall rules so you'll
never mistakenly get a packet from me or anybody else who uses my
nameservers for resolution.  I am not forcing or even asking you to
use the service.  Then again, your opinion is yours to have, despite
it being moot.

_END_

J C Lawrence also wrote:

> EasyDNS does not do Dynamic DNS.  DynamicDNS.org does not offer
> secondary MXing, globally distributed DNS servers (all continents),
> or full control over your zone file.

Actually, we do Static DNS, Dynamic DNS, Dynamic Zoning (a whole
dynamic zone framework), AXFR service, and Secondary service.  We have
nameservers in the Netherlands, Freemont, San Diego and as of today
have gotten space at Inflow in St. Louis for a couple more boxes.  I
doubt we will ever put a box at the south pole but you never know.

We are also going to be releasing a backup MX feature that adds way
more then your average MX.  We have the ability to enforce quotas,
filters, time-expiration, holds, pushes and the ability to view the
mail in the queue from a remote machine while the primary mail server
is still down.  I'd like to see another MX provider (esp. the for-cost
ones) compare to that.  They can't.
 
Thanks,
 David Ulevitch                       mailto:davidu@everydns.net
 Founder, EveryDNS.net                http://www.everydns.net     

===

To: David Ulevitch <davidu@everydns.net>
Cc: svlug@svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] Responses to criticisms and questions 
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 15:28:42 -0800
From: J C Lawrence <claw@kanga.nu>

On Fri, 18 Jan 2002 17:00:09 -0600 
David Ulevitch <davidu@everydns.net> wrote:

> ... however it isn't like I can send patches to ISC for bind.

Actually, you can.  As always they might not get accepted.  In my
case it got me on towards a job interview (at which point they
revealed that they had an already better patch in the works).

> Also, in case you aren't aware, development for bind9 is behind
> closed doors.  What DNS daemon do you use? (MaraDNS? I doubt it)

I don't care where the development occurs, or even particularly how,
or behind what doors.  (Heck, I was the project manager for
Linux/IA64, and that was all covered by NDAs, behind closed doors,
and generally in the super-sekrit category) Most of the Open Source
bits I'm actively involved with are run by single dictator
developers.  Active ad-hoc community participation is not a defining
criteria for an Open Source project.  Licensing is the defining
characteristic.

Nominum is responsive to their developed-for user base for design
criteria, patch acceptance, and support discussion.  As happens
neither of us fall into their target user-base market (I'm assuming
that you don't work for a root server or core ISP).  OTOH I know
people in that space, and Nominum is quite responsive and civic
minded there.

>> Oh, I don't dislike it or even complain about it, just question
>> its value.

> Okay, that's fine.  You are more then welcome to send me your IPs
> and I'll just add you to our ingress and egress firewall rules so
> you'll never mistakenly get a packet from me or anybody else who
> uses my nameservers for resolution.  I am not forcing or even
> asking you to use the service.  Then again, your opinion is yours
> to have, despite it being moot.

Ptui.  You're being silly.

>> EasyDNS does not do Dynamic DNS.  DynamicDNS.org does not offer
>> secondary MXing, globally distributed DNS servers (all
>> continents), or full control over your zone file.

> Actually, we do...

Please note the names quoted above.  They are not typoes for
EveryDNS.

> ... Static DNS, Dynamic DNS, Dynamic Zoning (a whole dynamic zone
> framework), AXFR service, and Secondary service.  We have
> nameservers in the Netherlands, Freemont, San Diego and as of
> today have gotten space at Inflow in St. Louis for a couple more
> boxes.  I doubt we will ever put a box at the south pole but you
> never know.

My interest specifically is: 

  One box on each US coast
  (At least) one in continental Europe.
  One in Australia
  One in Hong Kong

If things continue developing they way they are, Singapore may
become interesting as well.

> We are also going to be releasing a backup MX feature that adds
> way more then your average MX.  We have the ability to enforce
> quotas, filters, time-expiration, holds, pushes and the ability to
> view the mail in the queue from a remote machine while the primary
> mail server is still down.  I'd like to see another MX provider
> (esp. the for-cost ones) compare to that.  They can't.

This could be very interesting.  The devil is in the details.

===


the rest of The Pile (a partial mailing list archive)

doom@kzsu.stanford.edu