OT: Should I be Looking for a New Web Host?

[Christopher Browne]

On 12/9/06, VGS <vgs-XzQKRVe1yT0V+D8aMU/kSg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
>
> > When I pinged my domain, I received an error saying host could not be
> > found. I figure the hosts DNS server  was the problem.But the support
> > staff do not seem to have the skill set to resolve issues such as this.
> >
>
>
> Thats the reason I put xname.org as primary DNS server for my domains.
> This is a free service and allows me to easily switch between cheap
> hosting providers(I have 2 of them and pay around $5 per month each). In
> the last 2 years or so there was 1 major DDOS attack on xname.org which
> took it down for a couple of days. Apart from that service has been great.

The *failure* is an excellent demonstration of why you are required to
have at least *two* nameservers.   Remember:  Two is the *MINIMUM.*
The maximum is 13.

If you're using a "cheap hosting provider," where chances are that the
least reliable components will be the servers or connectivity to them,
and where the DNS servers they are operating are probably pretty
simply configured, it's unlikely that DNS will be your biggest
vulnerability.  If all your nameservers were pointing to
ns0/ns1.mycheaphostingprovider.net, chances are that your main outages
will NOT be a result of DNS problems, but rather of servers/networks
being down.

Under the circumstances you describe, I'd use not two, but three
nameservers, thus:

 1.  Have one that points at ns0.xname.org

 2.  Another that points via ns1.xname.org

 3.  Have a THIRD that points to a nameserver managed by your "cheap
      hosting provider."  They probably offer this at no extra charge;
      take this redundancy, by all means.

Having all your nameservers point to xname.org leaves you vulnerable
to the problem that someone tries to DDOS xname.org; by having one
like (#3) means that if that DDOS happens, all is not lost.
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