easyDNS Blog - Comments

Mark Jeftovic: Let the barrage of updates begin.

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Thu, 06 May 2010 21:36:33 -0400

We're "easyDNS" on Twitter.

http://twitter.com/easydns

steve caturan: Let the barrage of updates begin.

nospam@example.com (steve caturan) — Thu, 06 May 2010 18:32:30 -0400

thanks for the heads up! just wondering you folks don't have a fan page on Facebook or a Twitter page?

Mark J: DNS usage quotas: before you panic

nospam@example.com (Mark J) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 23:06:53 -0400

Hi,

First, I should say that the March 1st number is just way off. It was a fencepost error and basically was a couple orders of magnitude too high. We've finally smoothed out the issues around the query reporting (and....it's much FASTER on the new platform

I think anybody who has dealt with us for any period of time would have some comfort level around our ability to bring some intelligent cluefulness to a situation. Your email joe-job example is a good one. We'd look at the circumstances and of course waive any overage from something like that. (If it happened a lot, we'd probably suggest setting a higher TTL on your MX record - another thing you can do on the new platform

Your idea to look at usage over a longer period than a month is a good one. We're working out the mechanism for when a domain goes over a threshold - maybe we should look, even if it's just one or two months prior, and see if the same thing happened.

It's doable.

Jasper: DNS usage quotas: before you panic

nospam@example.com (Jasper) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:29:23 -0400

I think the proposed quota will be received with a similar response as when the mobile carriers started to charge for incoming SMS messages. Generally, people don't like paying for something they don't have reasonable control over.

The first half of this month I hovered around 15K queries/day. Last month my stats show anything from 8 hits on 11th to 1.3 million on the 1st. It's totally arbitrary and I have zero visibility into or control over what may have happened on the 1st of March (I use the domain for personal email and as out-of-domain ns record for a dozen (non-profit and small business) domains, none of which are of Slashdot calibre).

Given enough time, there will come a month that a spammer will decide to use my 3-letter domain on more than 5 days and I'll be stuck up with the bill.

If you can itemize my bill (i.e. I want to be able to audit where the discrepancy came from, and learn to prevent such outrageous usage), I'm willing to pay for what I use. If all you can do is present a number based on a graph that you indicate historically hasn't always been that accurate, you should get ready for a lot of questions and hand-holding as people try to understand what, within their control, they can change. From the perspective of customer support that can't be economical.

That said, I recognize the need for EasyDNS to charge those customers who use the system the most. I'm all for pay-as-you-go as I consider myself a light user. It's just that pay-as-you-go doesn't work if all you serve is an all-anyone-can-anonymously-eat buffet.

If you must, perhaps the averaging of queries shouldn't be done over a month, but since inception of the account (and perhaps quota should be shareable between different domains owned by the same customer).

Personally I question the economics of maintaining these statistics. The cost of their collection and aggregation seems to me to be of a similar magnitude than the servicing of the actual dns requests.

My 2ct.

chad: (April 1st post) DNSMadeEasy and easyDNS to merge

nospam@example.com (chad) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:32:42 -0400

I totally got punked on this one.

I hate you April Foolers!

frosty: Do you really need to register your name under .tel?

nospam@example.com (frosty) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 09:50:33 -0400

Have you ever considered adding more videos to your blog posts to keep the readers more entertained? I mean I just read through the entire article of yours and it was quite good but since I'm more of a visual learner,I found that to be more helpful well let me know how it turns out!
essays is my signature ...

Mark Jeftovic: DNS usage quotas: before you panic

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:23:40 -0400

What we're doing is taking out the top five days of the month, and replacing them with the average of the remaining days. This should protect you from intermittent spikes like this and won't penalize you for being successful (getting slashdotted or digg effect)

mac data recovery: DNS usage quotas: before you panic

nospam@example.com (mac data recovery) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:24:20 -0400

I'm reading this and I'm wondering what can a person do to reduce the number of queries that's coming from their site? What if a site gets 5 million or queries only occassionally, like 4 times for the month, will they also be penalized for this as well?

legege: Big Changes Coming to easyDNS

nospam@example.com (legege) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:59:00 -0500

Instead of increasing the DNS plus service, why don't you simply create a new product "DNS extra plus"? Personally, I pay for DNS plus only for your wonderful Backup mail and mailout service, I don't use anything else... And 39$ versus 59$ is not like if it was only a 5$ increment!

Mark Jeftovic: Big Changes Coming to easyDNS

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:21:39 -0500

Hi John, I probably worded that too vaguely.

We are not considering raising the basic service level to $59, but the "plus" service level. The $59 fee was a proposed price for the "Plus" or "Pro" service level without us being the registrar - but, and this is a big "but", the current features which differentiate between basic and plus service are being moved down to basic service.

In other words, people currently on "plus" or "pro" service who are there because they use the URL or email forwarding, will find themselves able to DOWNGRADE to the less expensive basic service.

The only reason a basic user would have to upgrade to plus or pro is if their domain is using over 1 million queries per month.

Jon: Big Changes Coming to easyDNS

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:09:24 -0500

Please please dont hike the basic service level to $59. I have hundreds of clients perfectly happy with the current basic service who will simply move elsewhere if this happens. I honestly will struggle to recommend what is otherwise an excellent DNS provider.

Dan: Do you really need to register your name under .tel?

nospam@example.com (Dan) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:33:42 -0500

I have never thought about including .tel into a reputation management strategy. Interesting topic.

Mark Jeftovic: Big Changes Coming to easyDNS

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:31:01 -0500

Yes, they're in there.

David: Big Changes Coming to easyDNS

nospam@example.com (David) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 07:28:44 -0500

Will you start supporting AAAA-records too in the new interface?

Mark Jeftovic: Big Changes Coming to easyDNS

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:51:56 -0500

Again, to re-iterate, the usage based query charges affect less than a few hundred domains on the system vs. the 120,000 under management.

If you are talking personal domains, you are for the most part not looking at increases. In fact, if you are using DNS-plus service because you want the email forwarding or URL forwarding on personal use domains, then you are looking at decreases, because those features are being moved down to the DNS-only/DNS Hosting level of service.