easyDNS Blog

DNS usage quotas: before you panic

I've fielded a handful of queries from members about the coming DNS usage quotas. Some have looked at the "query usage" links beside their domain names and are surprised at the numbers they are seeing.

One thing to be aware of is that we've discovered that the January numbers were tabulated incorrectly and are too high. To gain a truer insight into your usage, look at the January 28th figure. We are currently running a process to fix up the stats to reflect actual usage and expect to have those online within the next couple of days.

But I'd like to take an opportunity to convey the following principles behind this to our member base:

Continue reading "DNS usage quotas: before you panic"

Big Changes Coming to easyDNS

We will soon be launching our new member interface, a ground up rewrite of the current members.easydns.com website. It has been a long time in coming, like all complex projects, it always goes over-budget and takes longer than expected.

The current user interface works, but it's pretty stale. There are so many layers of upgrades, fixes and plugins underneath the UI you see when you log in, that it's hit the point of diminishing returns: every time we add a feature or commit a bugfix, it seems to break something else. Despite the fact that most people dislike change, especially user interface changes, it is time to move on to the next level for easyDNS.

Continue reading "Big Changes Coming to easyDNS"

Heads-up; re-assigning IPs of remote1.easydns.com and remote2.easydns.com

We are re-assigning the IP addresses for remote1.easydns.com and
remote2.easydns.com. The changes will be as follows;

WAS
remote1.easydns.com 216.246.59.66
remote2.easydns.com 209.200.141.4

IS NOW
remote1.easydns.com 205.234.220.154
remote2.easydns.com 209.200.187.4

This will not impact name service resolution, although if you are a secondary customer and are using a DNS server that can not accept netblock assignments into the ACL (MS DNS servers) you will have to change your configuration to reflect this move.

Holiday Hours

Our offices will be open for telephone support:

Thursday December 24th, 8:30AM - 3:00PM
Friday December 25th, closed
Saturday December 26th, closed
Sunday December 27th, 12:00AM - 6:00PM
Monday December 28th, 10:00AM - 6:00PM
Thursday December 31st, 8:30AM - 3:00PM
Friday January 1st, closed.

thank you
easyDNS

telephone support

Telephone support will be unavailable on Saturday December 12th, 2009 and will resume Sunday December 13th, 2009. Email support at support@easydns.com and billing@easydns.com will still be available.

We do apologise for the inconvenience.

thank you
easyDNS

Power outage at the Amsterdam co-lo...

Just over an hour ago, the co-location facility we use in Amsterdam suffered a brief power outage, which resulted in two of our nameservers being unexpectedly restarted:

ams1.easydns.com (part of the "ns1.easydns.com" Anycast cluster)
ns6.easydns.net

Our sysAdmins took "ams1.easydns.com" out of the "ns1.easydns.com" Anycast cluster as soon as this occurred, which means that "ns1.easydns.com" was not affected at all. However, as "ns6.easydns.net" is currently a stand-alone nameserver, our sysAdmins focused on bring this server up as quickly as possible.

At this time, "ns6.easydns.net" is operational again and responding to queries, and we will work with our co-location provider to determine the cause of this outage.

We apologise for any inconvenience.

appsto.re, a niched URL shortener for iphone apps

The other day I stumbled across http://appsto.re, a DNS client domain which is a pretty useful specialized URL shortener for iPhone apps.

A good example is easyDNS' own iPhone app for easyWhois. The iTunes URL is loooooooooooooong and cumbersome, and to be honest, I can't readily remember what shortened URL I created for it on easyURL (I think maybe http://easyurl.net/easyiphone?)

Well with appsto.re, we know it's simply http://appsto.re/easyWhois, and you can view the info for any given app by using http://appsto.re/info/easyWhois.

You can even create your own custom shortened URLs for any given iPhone app.

The other interesting thing about appsto.re that distinguishes it from most of the other URL shorteners out there, is that it actually has a revenue model, since I imagine they can use affiliate links to redirect to the paid apps (sorry guys, our app is free).

If the ns3 problem is still causing you trouble, read this

We've changed the glue record in the roots for ns3.easydns.org to reference a different node while we debug the data syncing issue.

Some queries are still coming in owing to DNS cache issues. If you recently updated your zone and that update has not been reflected in ns3.easydns.org then you could also consider removing ns3.easydns.org from your DNS delegation.

ns3 is a stand-alone node (we will be phasing out the stand-alone noded in the new year), as long as you have the ns1 and ns2 anycast strands in your delegation, you can safely remove ns3 from the delegation.

ns3.easydns.org

We're experiencing issues with this machine updating zone info.
We are working to resolve this issue and will post further info as it becomes available.

NS3 may become unresponsive for a brief period as we restart all DNS services on this machine.

Telephone Support - Sunday 6 December, 2009

At this time, telephone support is not available.

For support or billing inquiries, please email us:

support@easydns.com

billing@easydns.com

Thank you,

The easyDNS Support Team

ns3.easydns.org this morning

Greetings,

We are experiencing an issue with the DNS resolver on ns3.easydns.org this morning. This issue will not impact resolution. We are currently working with our network provider in London to resolve this issue.

Thanks,

NS1.EASYDNS.COM IP Change.

We are in the midst of changing the anycast address for ns1.easydns.com
The new IP of ns1 will be 64.68.192.10 , we are in the process if switching the zone entry as well as updating the glue records for ns1.easydns.com

We will leave the old IP operational for a couple of weeks.
During this time both the new IP and old IP will respond to queries.

As always, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

SOLVED: Hardware outage.

Update: The hardware outage has been solved and the members interface is now back online.

We have discovered a hardware issue with one of our DB servers.
This affects the usage of our main site and members area. Our sysadmins are on site and working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

We'll post further updates as info becomes available.

members interface offline

The main easyDNS member's interface at https://members.easydns.com and public facing website are currently experiencing database communications issues and are offline.

Systems personnel are onsite now and we hope to have things back to normal ASAP.

In the meantime, easyDNS production systems - DNS, URL forwarding, email forwarding, etc. are unaffected.

We will post updates accordingly and we are sorry for the outage.

URL forwarding issues... RESOLVED

Unfortunately, we are currently experiencing an issue with our URL forwarding services. Our sysAdmins are looking into the issue and hope to have it resolved as soon as possible.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

**UPDATE - 2009-11-12 - 12:02pm**
The URL forwarding issue we were experiencing has been resolved, and the URL forwarding service is operational at this time. Again, we apologise for the inconvenience.