Wednesday, 12 May 2010

When domain name offers are not offers

Many domain name registrars offer an introductory price for domain name registration which goes up in year 2. Unless you intend to drop your domain after 1 year, then this is NEVER a good offer.

For example, namecheap offers .com for $9.69 per annum (£6.55), where 1&1 offers an introductory price of £5.99 rising to £8.99. So on year 1, you save 56p with 1&1, then loose £1.88 on year 2, and £4.32 on year 3.

Saturday, 1 May 2010

DNS servers with 99.99% uptime

Our Free DNS servers, at www.freenameservers.co.uk have 99.99% uptime, this is
an uptime report for March 2010

Monthly uptime:99.99% Downtime:3 min(s) 38 sec(s)
Day 2010-04-30 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-29 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-28 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-27 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-26 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-25 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-24 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-23 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-22 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-21 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-20 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-19 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-18 Uptime:99.79% Downtime:3 min(s) 2 sec(s)
Day 2010-04-16 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-15 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-14 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-13 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-12 Uptime:99.96% Downtime:36 sec(s)
Day 2010-04-11 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-10 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-09 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-08 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-07 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-06 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-05 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-04 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-03 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-02 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2010-04-01 Uptime:100.00%

Thursday, 29 April 2010

AWS in Asia



Amazon announces the immediate availability of Asia Pacific Region in Singapore.

Starting today, Asia Pacific-based businesses and global businesses with customers based in Asia Pacific can run their applications and workloads in AWS's Singapore Region to reduce latency to end-users in Asia and to avoid the undifferentiated heavy lifting associated with maintaining and operating their own infrastructure. The new Singapore Region launches with multiple availability zones and currently supports:

  • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
  • Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
  • Amazon SimpleDB
  • Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)
  • Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
  • Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)
  • Amazon CloudWatch
  • Amazon CloudFront

Singapore Region pricing is available on the detail page of each service


Tuesday, 20 April 2010

Performance improvement for DNS lookups

Wondered why companies like Google have their nameservers named like ns1.google.com ?, rather than ns1.SomeOtherCompany.com ? - its' a performance tweak, that I'll demonstrate with a detailed lookup as follows:

DNS speed check for www.google.com

Probing k.root-servers.net for 'A' record for www.google.com.

Refered to b.gtld-servers.net. [Time 426 ms]

Probing b.gtld-servers.net for 'A' record for www.google.com.

Refered to ns3.google.com. [Time 81 ms]

Probing ns3.google.com for 'A' record for www.google.com.

Found, 'A' record for www.google.com. [Time 111 ms]

See, three lookups, one for .com, the other for .google.com, and finally www.google.com

Now, compare that with freenameservers.co.uk, whose nameserver is not on the same domain

DNS speed check for www.freenameservers.co.uk

Probing k.root-servers.net for 'A' record for www.freenameservers.co.uk.

Refered to ns2.nic.uk. [Time 337 ms]

Probing ns2.nic.uk for 'A' record for www.freenameservers.co.uk.

Refered to ns1.telivo.com. [Time 84 ms]

Probing k.root-servers.net for 'A' record for ns1.telivo.com.

Refered to b.gtld-servers.net. [Time 366 ms]

Probing b.gtld-servers.net for 'A' record for ns1.telivo.com.

Refered to ns0.ai270.net. [Time 84 ms]

Probing ns0.ai270.net for 'A' record for ns1.telivo.com.

Found, 'A' record for ns1.telivo.com. [Time 97 ms]

Probing ns1.telivo.com for 'A' record for www.freenameservers.co.uk.

Found, 'A' record for www.freenameservers.co.uk. [Time 84 ms]

Six lookups in total, one for .uk, then .com then telvio.com, then ns1.telvio.com, then freenameservers.co.uk. then www.freenameservers.co.uk

So, in short, if you have the option, you should always have your nameservers named the same as your primary domain.

Tuesday, 13 April 2010

DNS in IPv6

IPv6

In the introduction we would like to mention "the next generation Internet, or IPv6. You've probably already heard that the current IPv4 protocol is slow breath. Address space is nearly exhausted and, according to preliminary estimates, free IP addresses run out completely in 2012. Moving from zastarávajícího protocol to the new world is very slow and the content of IPv6 is still not much. Therefore, the users of this "news" too interested, though they will have many benefits. For example, with its huge address space of each device will have a so-called public address accessible from anywhere mobility, the automatic configuration and increased security through many mechanisms.

We would provide these benefits to you, our customers. We try to encourage and accelerate the transition to IPv6, and we are on the network to make available all our services. More information can be found at the end of this newsletter.

Overview of the occupied area

For hosting customers, we have prepared pie charts illustrating the use of their space in the purchased fare. In them it is apparent distribution space in the data to FTP, e-mails, databases and backups. At first glance, you may startle amount of space occupied on backup server. Security of data entrusted to you is our priority and therefore, all data is backed up regularly and carefully. We keep you for seven backups of all systems - the last five days and the last two months. So if you accidentally lose any data at your request, we can recover.



OnlineDNS - added support for SRV and AAAA records

In our application for managing DNS domains our management we have added support for SRV and AAAA records. AAAA record is used to translate domain names to IPv6 addresses and is similar to the IPv4 A record. SRV record specifies information about available services. Commonly used for SIP services (voice calls), XMPP (online communication and data exchange, typically Jabber), LDAP (directory server data), then records of this type requires such GoogleApps.

News in the Client section

If you have a large number of domains, you will appreciate the opportunity to sort by expiration date or title. All customers are also displays the icon "Pricelist domain" is hiding under the table is arranged with the prices of existing domain account for the client section.

Custom Windows Server only for 390,-CZK per month

In the event of the deployment radically reduces the cost per virtual serverhosting using the Microsoft Windows Web Server 2008 R2 with a dedicated 1 GB, 2 GHz processing power, 30 GB hard drive, a guaranteed 100 Mbps connectivity to the Internet and a full administrator access to Remote Desktop using RDP and IIS Manager for Remote Administration. Price of hosting fare is more than dvaapůlkrát higher and amounts to CZK 990 per month.

On the server you can install software for statistics, control panel, mail server or hMail popular CMS Kentico CMS Free Edition - We are the authorized hosting partner. Virtual serverhosting on the Microsoft Windows Web Server 2008 R2 is also ideal for beginning Web developers who can run it on my first application with minimal cost.

More about virtual serverhosting for CZK 390 per month can be found here: http://www.web4u.cz/serverhosting/vs_windows

More information on IPv6 - deployment for customers and hosting serverhosting

IPv6 newly assign serverhosting customers on demand, or our Web hosting customers come in short. Our hosting services are also available via the new network. So if you want your website presentation on the IPv6 network, simply add the appropriate entries in DNS. Addresses 2001:1568:: 10 when using PHP4 respectively. 2001:1568:: 11 for PHP5. Our technical support will be happy to advise you where to make your application settings.

Your supports IPv6? Try a simple test: enter into the browser address http://ipv6.web4u.cz. If your page appears, then contact your Internet service provider asking for activation.

Tuesday, 2 March 2010

Google uses MarkMonitor to register it's domains...


Interesting to see Google outsources it's domain name registration ...

Search on google (.co.za)
Match: One

Domain: google.co.za

Accounting info....
Date |Type| Cost |Invoices are E-Mail to....|Paid Date |ICnt| TrkNo |Billing Info
2001-06-25| N | 200.00|dnsbilling@webafrica.co.za|2001-09-17| 4 | 164683|Diginet
2002-07-01| R | 50.00|dnsbilling@webafrica.co.za|2002-08-07| 2 | 227053|Diginet
2003-06-06| U | 0.00|dnbilling@alldomains.com |2003-06-06| 0 | 0|Alldomains.com
2003-07-01| R | 50.00|dnbilling@alldomains.com |2003-07-09| 1 | 292974|Alldomains.com
2003-08-15| U | 0.00|dnbilling@alldomains.com |2003-08-15| 0 | 0|Alldomains.com
2004-07-01| R | 50.00|dnbilling@alldomains.com |2004-07-05| 1 | 369580|Alldomains.com
2005-07-01| R | 50.00|dnbilling@alldomains.com |2005-07-06| 1 | 463480|Alldomains.com
2006-07-03| R | 50.00|dnbilling@alldomains.com |2006-07-05| 1 | 607827|Alldomains.com
2006-07-08| U | 0.00|ccops@markmonitor.com |2006-07-08| 0 | 0|MarkMonitor
2006-07-15| U | 0.00|ccops@markmonitor.com |2006-07-15| 0 | 0|MarkMonitor
2007-07-02| R | 50.00|ccops@markmonitor.com |2007-07-02| 1 | 788199|MarkMonitor
2008-07-02| R | 50.00|ccops@markmonitor.com |2008-07-02| 1 | 1004899|MarkMonitor
2009-07-02| R | 50.00|ccops@markmonitor.com |2009-07-02| 1 | 1299609|MarkMonitor


Flashing RED indicates that payment has not been received - please
confirm with the UniForum SA accounting department, accounts@co.za, should this
not be according to your records. You have been sent 0 invoices/statements.



(Info:- Historical info exists - the oldest or 'original' is last) ...
google <-- The info shown below
google.1
google.2
google.3
google.4

0a. lastupdate : 2006-07-15 19:16:14+02
0b. emailsource : chris.fulgham@markmonitor.com
0c. emailposted : Fri, 14 Jul 2006 11:03:17 -0600
0d. emailsubject : Update google.co.za
0g. historycount : 5
0h. invoiceno : 0
0i. contracttype : NEW
0j. rcsversion : $Revision: 1.138 $ $Date: 2006/07/11 13:22:53 $
1a. domain : google.co.za
1b. action : U
2a. registrant : Google Inc.
2b. registrantpostaladdress: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View,
2c. registrantstreetaddress: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View,
2d. amount : 0.00
2e. paymenttype : I
2f. billingaccount : MarkMonitor
2g. billingemail : ccops@markmonitor.com
2i. invoiceaddress : PMB 155, 10400 Overland Road, Boise, ID, 83709 US
2j. registrantphone : +1 6503300100
2k. registrantfax : +1 6506181499
2l. registrantemail : dns-admin@google.com
2n. vat :
3a. operationaldate : 2006/07/15 19:16:14
3b. cname :
3c. cnamesub1 :
3d. cnamesub2 :
4a. admin : Admin, DNS
4b. admintitle : DNS Administrator
4c. admincompany : Google Inc.
4d. adminpostaladdr : 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 US
4e. adminphone : +1 6503300100
4f. adminfax : +1 6506181499
4g. adminemail : dns-admin@google.com
4h. adminnic :
5a. tec : Admin, DNS
5b. tectitle : DNS Administrator
5c. teccompany : Google Inc.
5d. tecpostaladdr : 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 US
5e. tecphone : +1 6503300100
5f. tecfax : +1 6506181499
5g. tecemail : dns-admin@google.com
5h. tecnic :
6a. primnsfqdn : ns1.google.com
6b. primnsip : 216.239.32.10
6c. primnsipv6 :
6e. secns1fqdn : ns2.google.com
6f. secns1ip : 216.239.34.10
6g. secns1ipv6 :
6i. secns2fqdn : ns3.google.com
6j. secns2ip : 216.239.36.10
6k. secns2ipv6 :
6m. secns3fqdn : ns4.google.com
6n. secns3ip : 216.239.38.10
6o. secns3ipv6 :
6q. secns4fqdn :
6r. secns4ip :
6s. secns4ipv6 :
8a. netblock1start :
8b. netblock1end :
8c. netblock2start :
8d. netblock2end :
8e. netblock3start :
8f. netblock3end :
9a. description1 : Web portal doing business internationally
9b. description2 :
9c. description3 :
9d. description4 :
9e. description5 :
9f. description6 :

Friday, 5 February 2010

Price comparison of Slovenian (.si) domain names

I compared a number of Slovenian domain registrars for prices for one year for a .si domain, with no hosting.

tld-registrar.com - €30 / year
101domain.com - $119 / year
slovenia-domain.com - €16.80 / year
domene.si - €19.96 / year
domovanje.si - €15.59 / year
domenar.net - €14.90
hitrost.com - €15.54
Gigaspark.com - €18.90

The cheapest of the providers that had an english option was slovenia-domain.com at 16.80 euro. They also had a paypal option, so this is the one I chose.

domenar.net also appeared to have a paypal option, but it didn't work when I tried it.

All the other providers required a bank transfer as a form of payment, and had no english option. their sales support spoke english, and were even happy to zero rate the purchase for VAT, meaning that it would have been possible to order the domain for €12.95 from HitTrost.com
(podpora@hitrost.com)