DNS Providers

DNS service providers are independent providers of DNS for customers hosting their own domains.  To reliably run a site one should have at least two servers in different physical locations.  Often times it's much cheaper and easier to use a DNS service provider than it is to run two servers in different locations.

Service providers range in price from free to extremely expensive, and everything in between.  When looking for a DNS service provider, the key things to look for are:

• Multiple physical locations
• Multiple servers (at least four)
• On or just off an Internet backbone
• Low ping-times to their servers

The easiest way to check the quality of a DNS service provider is to ping their DNS servers.  Keep in mind anyone going to your site will go to them first, so the speed of your site has at least some dependence on the speed of their servers (to be fair, once the inital query is made it is usually cached, so then it's just the speed of your ISP or local DNS server).

Tracert is also a useful tool when investigating a DNS service provider.  Knowing the location of a server in addition to its ping time will give you some assurance of quality.  If you're on the West coast, and one of their servers is on the East coast, it may be ok to have a higher ping time, because you want your site to be fast for everyone, not just yourself.  If the company has a global presence, with servers in other countries or continents, you're probably making a good choice.  Keep in mind that not all sites claiming to have a world-wide presence actually do.

Free or Paid?

Free DNS providers are often limited either in the types of services, types of DNS entries, number of entries, number of queries, servers, or total bandwidth.  When you pay for service, you usually have much more flexibility and freedom.  In other words, you get what you pay for.  If you're a home user and their free service works for you, why pay for it?  But if you're running a business and can't afford to have your site(s) go down, you should seriously consider paying for it as a cost of doing business.

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