GoDaddy's New "Selective DNS Blackouts" Policy
rscott.org
And a response from GoDaddy:
http://rscott.org/dns/GoDaddy_Selective_DNS_Blackouts_Update.htm
rscott.org
http://rscott.org/dns/GoDaddy_Selective_DNS_Blackouts_Update.htm
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.
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)
Any other good DNS tool that queries from multiple GEO locations?
Seriously, time to migrate to namecheap.com or other. Its sad this kind of advertising even works.
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.
http://rscott.org/dns/GoDaddy_Selective_DNS_Blackouts_Update...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Remember color.com?
They don't know about Godaddy's bad press or it's upselling techniques. They just know they saw a superbowl ad saying "need a domain name? use godaddy"
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.
When I had my own server and tried to transfer the domain there was no way for me to get them to release the domain name. If I cancel my hosting account, then I would have to wait until the domain expires and becomes available again, so that I can then re-register it with another registrar, was their reply. No matter what I tried I couldn't get them to let me transfer the domain name away from them or even update the nameservers to make it point to the new server.
Things surely have changed by now but because of their policy I lost a well established domain name, so that I haven't touched their services ever since.
I've been using namecheap for years. Never had any problems with them. They are reasonably priced and fast to respond. The only thing I don't like is their slightly confusing interface. Hiring an UX engineer and giving him free reign wouldn't hurt them :)
I keep getting emails about expiring domains and auto-renewals. I maintain a separate spread-sheet to keep track of these.
For some reason it not only annoys me but it always make my blood pressure shoot up. To turn these alerts off you have to disable auto-renew for the domain. This check box is not easy to find. They hide the auto-renew check box column very cleverly.
Now I get emails about expiring other services... I still haven't figured how to turn these off.
Pay for what you use from people with do right by their customers.
They're also a huge reseller. I'd rather deal with a tier 1 provider instead of one 2 or 3 links down the chain.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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/Your comments about css etc are perfectly fine, and interesting, in an of themself - but not in the context of that article. In the context of that article they were off topic.
Your reply indicates that you think that if the topic is interesting at all (your footnotes) then it can be placed anywhere, and that is not so. Comments need to stay on topic to the article they are attached to. It would be one thing if the topic were css and you were brining up a side note. But this article was about dns, css was not on anyone else's mind.
Now, please bear in mind that while you just replied
Your comments about css etc are perfectly fine, and interesting, in an of themself - but not in the context of that article. In the context of that article they were off topic.
you previously stated
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.
I was obviously replying to the latter.
Let me emphasize a point you’re not addressing. Even though vote counts are gone, relative positioning of comments give you an idea of what HN as a community deems interesting. Clearly my original comment was not considered enlightening, engaging, nor for that matter inappropriate. But, again, plenty of popular comments are decidedly off topic with respect to the article’s content: DNS, webserver used, whois information, ping times, JS usage, accessibility, color choice, cookies, character encoding, HTML semantics, etc.
But that’s the thing: the moment you provide a URL in HN, many aspects that go way beyond the actual content are generally not considered off topic. Whether that is right or wrong, whether this means “not getting it” are, in my opinion, entirely pointless mental exercises. Clearly, as soon as this changes significantly I will heed the cue and adjust, possibly looking for venues where this “off-topic” chatter is deemed acceptable and even fun.
In any event, thanks again for clarifying your point. Cheers.
Namecheap SSL cert (RapidSSL): $10
StartCom SSL cert: $0
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."
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.
Go Daddy has lots of competition, they're just outselling all of them.
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.
http://faq.nearlyfreespeech.net/section/domainregistration/a...
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.