Why are DNS services so expensive?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5483779

by AxisOfEval • 13 years ago

2 3 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

There were days when ZoneEdit would let you host up to five domains completely free of cost. And reasonably so, AFAIK a DNS reply rarely crosses 520 bytes unless you are doing something exotic.

ZoneEdit now charges $12 per domain per year. Others seem to have joined the bandwagon. Why so expensive? Most importantly, are there any "full-featured" free providers of repute remaining?

jauer2• 13 years ago

DNS is one of those things that is easy to do yet hard to do right.

On the low end someone could run nsd/bind/powerdns on a vm from linode and one from prgmr and be 80% of the way there. That extra 20% involves getting your own IP space for anycast, proper instrumentation, BGP, probably colocation around the world, and making that all work together. If someone is going to go to all that trouble they darn well better be charging for it if you want to be able to depend on it.

AxisOfEval• 13 years ago

Hmmm... Thanks. That clears it :o).

But at the same time, I have rarely seen players who charge (and some of them quite a lot) advertise or talk about their anycast capabilities.

jauer2• 13 years ago

They could be charging for convenience, a pretty UI, etc.

To name a few of the more popular ones that charge that I'm aware of:

Amazon Route53: http://aws.amazon.com/route53/faqs/#Route_53_anycast

Dyn (right below the price) http://dyn.com/dns/dynect-managed-dns-lite/

DNS Made Easy: http://www.dnsmadeeasy.com/technology/ip-anycast/

EasyDNS: https://web.easydns.com/dns_management/?icode=dnshosting

Why are DNS services so expensive?

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