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GoDaddy's New "Selective DNS Blackouts" Policy
And a response from GoDaddy:
http://rscott.org/dns/GoDaddy_Selective_DNS_Blackouts_Update.htm
- soult 15y agoBy the way, the domain rscott.org is registered with GoDaddy.
- georgieporgie 15y agoI tallied up all the votes in a HN thread about registrars and settled on NearlyFreeSpeech.net. Their payment system is weird (you fund your pool of money from which charges are deducted), but otherwise it was quick, painless, and not full of creepy, sexualized imagery and cheesy, repetitive upselling techniques. GoDaddy is a bit cheaper if you spend the time to scrounge up coupon codes, but wow, NearlyFreeSpeech was the first time my domain registrar's website didn't give me a headache.
- idlewords 15y agoUsually that kind of payment system is there to avoid having to pay significant per-transaction fees, which are especially onerous for low-priced stuff.
- guelo 15y agoIt's a shame, HN used to function as a super high quality recommendation resource for startup services like this. Now after they removed comment scores not so much, or at least not as easily.
- seabee 15y agoNFS was a GoDaddy reseller, last time I checked.
- josephb 15y agoAccording to the NFS FAQ they use Public Domain Registry. http://faq.nearlyfreespeech.net/section/domainregistration/accredited#accredited http://faq.nearlyfreespeech.net/section/domainregistration/a...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mst 15y agoI once ended up in a ... discusssion ... with the owner of nfs.net about deployment of certain open source projects I'm involved with. It didn't end well, due to a couple of early misunderstandings that we failed to resolve before the conversation went of the rails. As such, I don't think I'd ever want to be a customer of theirs. However, I -do- believe that their service is competently delivered and extremely cost effective; every other user I've ever spoken to has been entirely happy, so I've put my own experience down to a combination of personality conflict and bad luck, and am happy to say their service is likely one very much worth considering if you fall into any of the markets they target.
- ez77 15y agoI like how he uses mostly POSH [1] for his markup. Too bad he must appeal to something like the H4 element in order to include the author's name and the publication date. It is difficult to understand that an academic such as Berners-Lee came up with prominently article-oriented HTML and did not include an AUTHOR tag or DATE tag. [1] http://microformats.org/wiki/posh http://microformats.org/wiki/posh
- ars 15y agoUm, what does this have to do with the article?
- ez77 15y agoIt is a technical point, in a technical forum. It is fairly common for HNers to comment, say, on the CSS technology used in an article about the US deficit, and they are generally not downvoted or scolded. Similarly, my comment is that the author essentially appeals to no CSS at all.
- ars 15y agoYou really don't get this? People comment on the css when it interesting and you can learn from it. Saying someone didn't use css is not interesting at all. It's not a design page, it's not an html tutorial, it's an article on DNS, the html and css make difference at all. Try to answer (in your mind) the question: "So what?" to both your posts. Merely raising a point isn't really enough - there has to be a reason to raise it.
- ez77 15y agoSince this is no longer about my comment, but rather about me, let me open my response by saying that what I really don't get is what drove you to consider my uniniteresting comment worthy of your time and words, instead of simply downvoting it, just as many people did (some upvoted, though!). Merely raising a point isn't really enough - there has to be a reason to raise it. My point, in case it was not clear, is that there is merit and elegance to not using CSS at all. It is (arguably!) the purest way of exalting content: forgetting completely about presentational aspects. My point, maybe not well explained first, is that it is noteworthy to see this kind of choice in 2011 by a tech-savvy author. It may not be interesting to you, but it is for more than one person. See, e.g., [1], [2]. I accept this may not be interesting to you, and even to most HNers. Rest assured that if (and only if) I find an overwhelming proof of the latter, I will avoid this kind of comment in the future. But, for the love of Ken, don't even try to take ownership of as subjective a concept as "interesting". Heck, an article on anything at all on HN brings up well-received comments on ping times, DNS servers, JS file delivery, etc. and, um, that may have nothing to do with the content of the article itself. That's one of the main reasons I, for one, love HN. [1] http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats/IRC/2007-04-06#T091456 [2] http://naked.dustindiaz.com/
- rednaught 15y agoAnd Godaddy's response: http://rscott.org/dns/GoDaddy_Selective_DNS_Blackouts_Update.htm http://rscott.org/dns/GoDaddy_Selective_DNS_Blackouts_Update...
- dredmorbius 15y agoThat just doesn't make sense. Whether it's R. Scott Perry or GoDaddy's PR flack who're confusing DNS with WHOIS data, I'm not sure. I've encountered throttle limits on WHOIS queries from numerous registrars, going back years. In the normal course of events, it's not necessary to query WHOIS a whole lot, but some legitimate uses (spam and other forms of abuse fighting, for example) are ... expediated somewhat by access to, say, contact information for a given network. Some years ago I investigated caching whois clients and found jwhois to be reasonably good (it presumes information about whois servers which isn't always accurate) and both greatly speeds up response times and reduces repeat requests for a given entity.
- politician 15y agotldr: The new owners of GoDaddy have decided to block DNS traffic rather then invest in their infrastructure to handle the additional load. See also: bridges, roads, wireless carriers.
- rkalla 15y agotldr addendum: because they want to push back some of the 99% of registered sites that use the free DNS service yet drive huge amounts of traffic and want them to upgrade to DNS Premium support.
- speleding 15y ago"GoDaddy have decided to block DNS traffic rather then invest in their infrastructure to handle the additional load" The article doesn't say that at all, it specifically mentions that this is not the reason for the block. Did you read it before commenting?
- politician 15y agoYeah, I did, but I accidentally included information from the "GoDaddy response" linked by rednaught. If you didn't read the 2nd link, then I understand how it sounds wrong. In retrospect, I should have replied to rednaught's post.
- kennywinker 15y agoCan someone explain the implications of this a little clearer? It sounds bad, but I don't understand why.
- lisper 15y agoIf you use GoDaddy your sites may not work because GoDaddy is too cheap to provision enough servers to handle the load. So don't use GoDaddy.
- pplante 15y agoLets not over-sensationalize this, buy domains from GoDaddy, just skip the other services. Their domains and SSL certs are still some of the cheapest.
- mtogo 15y agoGodaddy SSL cert: $50 Namecheap SSL cert (RapidSSL): $10 StartCom SSL cert: $0 Gandi.net SSL cert: $0 with domain registration
- dangrossman 15y agoPrices are not static things. Namecheap isn't always $10 and GoDaddy isn't always $50. In fact, GoDaddy charges $12 for SSL certs right now with a coupon you'll find on any coupon site.
- Maxious 15y ago> Gandi.net SSL cert: $0 with domain registration I am a happy Gandi.net customer but I had never heard of this! Looking back it's mentioned in the renewal confirmation email "Did you know? Since February 20th 2009, when you create a domain name at Gandi, you also benefit from a standard Gandi SSL certificate for one year!" but of course I didn't pay much attention to those. The fine print for the SSL certificate is "Included for free the first year with the purchase, transfer, or renewal of your domain name. €12 euros excl. vat per year for its renewal. Offer valid until December 31st, 2011."
- veyron 15y agoIs there a market nowadays for a new low-cost registrar / hosting provider?
- dangrossman 15y agoThere's always a market for lower cost, but you're not going to beat the prices of the highest volume registrar in the world.
- EwanToo 15y agoFor registrars, the margins are basically non-existant, low cost + high volume is where they're all already at. For .com domains, Verisign charge all registrars $7.34 per registration (going up to $7.85 in January 2012), so when you consider GoDaddy charge $11.99 (less with various offers), it's not a big margin business.
- imrehg 15y agoI'm still confused why would anyone want to by their domain name from GoDaddy, after all this press they get. It looks like a horrible company in general (not just this story) and everyone giving them money just helps them suck more. If I could see they are improving, then a current suckiness can be forgiven, but when actually getting worse?
- lazyjeff 15y agoIt shouldn't be confusing. It's the price. Domains are a commodity, and $7.69 for a domain (after applying one of the widely-available coupons) is the lowest price in the industry. If someone registers many domains, this adds up quickly.
- buff-a 15y agoNetsol, register, etc all charge $6.99 if you ask.
- dspillett 15y ago> if you ask There is the explanation. That is the point. GoDaddy ram their cheap price down the public's throat by TV, magazine and online advertising. If people see an advert and decide they might want the product at that price then look at some other site to compare and see a higher price, most won't ask.
- nknight 15y agoIn my book, that makes them about as slimy as GoDaddy. It's one thing if you're a huge-volume customer or have unique needs, but companies that have two price lists -- one for the far more efficient (for BOTH parties) online sales channel, and a lower one for the human-intervention sales channel, just disgust me.
- sudont 15y agoYou get that everywhere in media buys, and yes, a large segment of people interacting on the web—the ones who don’t know code—view the domain name as a media buy. Remember color.com?
- amirrustam 15y agoWhat do you guys use instead of GoDaddy? Just interested to see what others prefer out there. I was gonna do a domain transfer to GoDaddy, but after reading this I won't be considering them.
- soult 15y agoThere are multiple threads on HN already answering your question, you can find them via the search function. (This comment is not meant to cry "double post", just as a pointer for your to look for more information on GoDaddy alternatives).
- fractalcat 15y agoI use dnsimple (http://dnsimple.com http://dnsimple.com). It's not one of the cheaper ones (US$3/month for DNS hosting up to ten domains, US$14/registration), but it has a nice UI, JSON REST API and support that doesn't suck.
- abraham 15y agohttps://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ Pay for what you use from people with do right by their customers.
- dangravell 15y agoStraightforward hosting too. I use them simply for 301'ing requests to my root domain to my dub-dub-dub site, that being hosted on Amazon S3. The pay as you go approach to that makes it very cost effective.
- noinput 15y agouse them to hold your registration, then set your DNS up with cloudflare.com
- masonhensley 15y agoThat's what we've been doing.
- davidu 15y agolots of words, not a lot of evidence. I know quite a few ops and abuse folks at godaddy who have root or enable, but this doesn't seem substantiated enough for me to even waste their time with. The title is linkbait. There is no such official policy that we know of or that this bloggers knows of. This person is making a supposition, at best.
- rednaught 15y agoI added a link in another comment to the response he received from Godaddy. Sorry it has fallen through the depths here.
- ghshephard 15y agoNo major DNS provider would engage in a "Selective DNS Blackout" because of resource constraints - DNS is one of those protocols that is both embarrassingly parallel, as well as super efficient to serve. It's not unreasonable to see a well tuned, inexpensive (< $5K) DNS server provide on the order of 100,000 responses/second. And if you want to serve a million responses/second - just scale horizontally and add the resolvers to your VIP pool on your load balancer. This article doesn't pass the common sense test. Not to say that GoDaddy isn't engaging in this selective DNS blackout policy, just that it's not because of a underinvestment in their infrastructure.
- bartwe 15y agoMaybe the article has been changed but it indeed says that it most likely not about cost but about pushing a 'premium' dns service.
- ghshephard 15y agoThat makes a lot more sense. It would be a lot better if the DNS provider said something like, "First million DNS entries served is free, after that, we charge you $0.50/million queries" (Amazon pricing for DNS) Then, you respond to every request as fast as you can. (Note, this also provides an incentive to the customer to jack up the TTL on the resource records, so 99.99% of the requests are handled at the caching servers instead of GoDaddy)
- bwblabs 15y agoSome proof would be nice here. I almost thought having some proof after using Watchmouse DNS Analysis on a Godaddy DNS hosted domain: http://www.watchmouse.com/en/dnstool.php?varghost=cheapdomainseller.com http://www.watchmouse.com/en/dnstool.php?varghost=cheapdomai... , and hit some 'No response' from multiple locations. But some Watchmouse test locations always reply with 'No response' (Amsterdam3-Netherlands; Belgrade-Serbia; Budapest-Hungary; Frankfurt-Germany; Lille-France; Madrid-Spain; Novosibirsk-Russia; San Francisco-U.S.A.; Sofia-Bulgaria). Any other good DNS tool that queries from multiple GEO locations?
- drzaiusapelord 15y ago
- freddealmeida 15y agoI moved away from GoDaddy years ago. They have proven themselves to be irrationally self-interested. This is just one more reason no one should use them. While the domain cost is low, ancillary costs are high: not to mention moral cost for using a company that kills Elephants for sport.
- sp332 15y agoThe elephant was attacking a town, right? It was going to be killed in defense anyway. The town managed to sell "kill rights" to a rich idiot, good for them.
- beedogs 15y agoJust another reason I don't do business with GoDaddy. And neither should you.
- dotBen 15y agoDomain registration != DNS hosting I continue to be amazed at how many startups (and other companies, high profile individuals, etc) rely on GoDaddy for their DNS rather than having a properly managed DNS hosting as part of their web-hosting solution. DNS tacked on to domain registration is a throwaway after thought - certainly for GoDaddy, regardless of whether this 'blackout' is true or not.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- RyanKearney 15y agoPeople honestly use GoDaddy for anything other than domain names? NEVER use the same company to host your DNS as you registered your domain with. At that point you're pretty much putting all your eggs in one basket.
- johngalt 15y agoYou don't buy DNS service from Godaddy, you buy registration. The DNS service is a courtesy. For all this article states here's much more likely what's happening: 1. People are using the "free DNS service" for high traffic sites rather than rolling their own or buying a paid DNS service. Then setting their TTLs to 1 hour to make changes easier. 2. Godaddy is paying real $$ to host DNS for all those domains and in some cases could be revenue negative on a domain because of it. Regardless of how cheap you think DNS hosting is, Godaddy makes $3-4/year or less on a domain registration. 3. Godaddy is responding by throttling sources of extreme (possibly automated) DNS query traffic. The author is someone going to the cheapest registrar and complaining that the complimentary serivces have limits. Once those limits are found he is trying to paint a "cheap/greedy corporation" picture. If the author is looking to write about underinvestment in infrastructure, he should consider an autobiography.
- jonursenbach 15y agoSince when is GoDaddy a monopoly?
- libraryatnight 15y agoYea, it seems like a trend these days that if someone controls a majority market share people on the internet start screaming "monopoly!" Go Daddy has lots of competition, they're just outselling all of them.