Show HN: Configure domain redirects and URL forwarding with a simple DNS record | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Configure domain redirects and URL forwarding with a simple DNS record

redirect.name

25 pointsholic17 comments

Shame it requires polluting the root of your zone. Could have used a TXT record at "_redirect-name.example.com" or similar instead.

[edit] Also, this service will be abused by spammers and it will then become impossible to use a "redirect.name" URL in email.

This is the kind of feedback I was looking for by putting this out there - so thanks!

I hadn't thought about putting the TXT records on another hostname. That would actually be advantageous for using a CNAME instead of a A record, too.

Can you elaborate on "impossible to use redirect.name URL in email"?

Does something about the redirect.name setup negate the use of DKIM?

It shouldn't. Nor should it affect SPF records and the like.

My point was that it will be used by spammers to hide their domains. So redirect.name will quickly get added to email blacklists, so people wont be able to send legitimate emails containing redirect.name URLs as they'll be rejected/blocked/filtered.

redirect.name is never part of the actual redirect. It's only the documentation site. It's always your domain that is serving the HTTP redirect.

I have done something similar myself. First I tried to put the TXT record at the same domain which I did want to redirect. To tackle the CNAME problem did I come up with a complicated solution which I also did write up (https://github.com/tellnes/dhr2). But when I actually tried to use it was it too complicated.

What I'm actually using now and have been using for some time is just a simple TXT record at a subdomain (eg _redirect.example.com). I also have a script which looks for these TXT records in my zones and adds A/AAAA records when needed.

You can check it out as follows:

    dig TXT +noall +answer _redirect.infogym.no
    dig A +noall +answer infogym.no
    dig AAAA +noall +answer infogym.no
    curl -Is infogym.no | grep Location

The plan is at some point to put the scripts I actually use on GitHub, but I have never come so far.

Hmmm, I'm not seeing the value proposition here. Or, I'm unclear why I'd use this service.

Here's how I understand redirect.name working:

===

1. An A/ALIAS/ANAME record for "example.com" points to a redirect.name service (self-hosted or otherwise).

2. The service sees the "example.com" HTTP request via the host header.

3. Service does a DNS lookup for a matching TXT record redirect rule.

4. When found, the service issues a 301/302 HTTP redirect, according to the matching rule.

===

Is this correct?

If so, compare to:

===

1. Create an A record for "example.com" that points to my Apache server.

2. Apache detects "example.com" via the host header.

3. Virtual host config for matching domain issues a 301/302 HTTP redirect.

===

Aside from shuffling the redirect config from Apache to DNS, what's the advantage of using redirect.name?

Additionally, every domain name registrar I've used includes a feature called "URL forwarding" that can redirect all HTTP requests for a domain to another. Again, what benefit does redirect.name provide that URL forwarding doesn't?

I'd love to hear the use cases.

You can't always have URL redirect for your host records (see for instance DigitalOcean's DNS service). Also, as you unintentionally pointed out, you need a server to do the redirection, which can be a waste of resources for some use cases (see below).

You'd use this service if you were using things like Heroku, which are relying on CNAME records to avoid distributing all the traffic on one IP address that could have the machine it points to shut down at any moment - that's the principle of the cloud.

My company is currently offering "web forwarding" to our customers for free, but this service outsourced to the same third-party that provides our DNS hosting. While the DNS service is rock solid, the redirection service has had many shortcomings including delays in updating redirects, caching issues, etc.

This was one of a few ideas we had for bringing this in-house. I've seen other DNS-configured redirection services, but nothing with the flexibility we'd need to offer our customers to match what they're currently getting. I thought I'd do a quick mock-up of the idea and put it out there to get some feedback.

What is an ALIAS or ANAME record? I've never heard of that, and it isn't listed among these record types: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DNS_record_types

ALIAS/ANAME records are non-standard. They are like CNAME records in that they accept a hostname value, but they ultimately resolve as an A record.

See: http://support.dnsimple.com/articles/differences-between-a-c... http://www.dnsmadeeasy.com/services/aname-records/

This is nice. I can finally get some easy redirects here, as Cloudflare's page rules don't work.

Clever! Thanks for making this open source. I really like small services like this written with Lua+nginx.

So I have to trust my domain with a 3rd party and pray they never shut down? No thanks!

Well it's open source, you can host it yourself too.

Well, you're trusting your nameserver anyway.

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