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I'm recovering from a DNS disaster and I need some good advice on an alternate solution.

My company owns a domain name through NetworkSolutions. Our website is hosted by another company who also maintains our DNS records. Our email is hosted by Google Apps, and the MX records are maintained through the afore-mentioned website/DNS host.

Yesterday our website/DNS host had a serious hiccup in some software and completely overwrote all of our DNS records with invalid values; successfully pointing our domain and MX records at the wrong servers. Unfortunately the problem wasn't caught soon enough to avoid wide-spread caching of the invalid records. On top of that, it wasn't fixed until several hours later, combine that with a long TTL on the records; we have customers who are still bouncing emails.

Anyhow, I am now completely terrified of this company's ability to do a good job, so I am considering switching to NetworkSolutions for our DNS service.

I need the ability to configure A, CNAME, MX, and TXT records, preferably with a nice user interface (our current provider has a poor UI and doesn't support TXT records). Is NetworkSolutions a recommended DNS host?

I am a little biased in their direction because the service will be free since we already pay them for our domain name. However I'm curious what others have experienced with their service.

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    Just to repeat a common phrase we say here. "DNS does not propagate"!
    – Zoredache
    Mar 3, 2011 at 0:37
  • @Zoredache, I am only assuming you are referring to the fact that a record propagates, and not the "Domain Name System" itself? Or are you suggesting something else?
    – joxl
    Mar 3, 2011 at 1:33
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    propagate implies a DNS change is being actively distributed to caching nameservers across the globe. It isn't. It's completely passive and TTL based, thus "propagate" is a poor verb choice which often leads to unrealistic customer expectations.
    – hobodave
    Mar 3, 2011 at 1:55
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    @hobodave: thank you for the clarification. Due to the popularity of the term, it's an easy "mistake". One would need to be well educated in the definition of "propagate" just to understand the argument. While the term "cache" is certainly best fitted for this context, "propagate" still describes the general phenomenon that occurs, regardless of how it comes about below the surface.
    – joxl
    Mar 3, 2011 at 2:38

4 Answers 4

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I just checked my network solutions account for my personal domain and yes it does support TXT records.

I'd say the UI is very simple. The only thing that might confuse some people is they use the standard . at the end of a full hostname in their Web UI.

So if you have a domain example.com and you are making a CNAME record to point ftp.example.com to www.example.com you'd put either www or www.example.com. as the destination of the CNAME, if you were to put www.example.com (no . at the end) it would be interpreted as www.example.com.example.com

This confuses people that are used to website addresses over dns hostname values (where a . at the end basically means, don't append my domain).

For reliability, I've been registered with them since 03 and switched to their DNS in 09 when I decommissioned my local DNS server with no issues, but it is a private domain so I don't heavily monitor it.

One caveat of being on a big host (we experienced this with register.com at work a few years ago) is rarely, but it does happen, they get targeted by a large attack. 2-3 years ago register.com's dns servers were under a multi-day DDoS that kept bringing their nameservers down. The only way we could alleviate it until fixed was to move our customer's records onto our own dns servers.

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I've used Network Solutions personally and professionally for years now with no issues. You have complete access and control of your DNS records with them. The UI is as good as anybody else and better than some (GoDaddy I'm looking at you).

Having them manage your DNS records makes things a little less cumbersome and confusing as they're both your registrar and your DNS host, which is a subject that often confuses people.

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  • +1 for looking at godaddy :)
    – pablo
    Mar 2, 2011 at 22:32
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    @pablo: I hate those guys. I ordered an SSL cert from them (out of neccessity) and the customer service rep I spoke to kept saying that everything was "golden". "Your cert request is golden!", "Your confirmation code looks golden!". He thought that I set up my own web site to impress the ladies.
    – joeqwerty
    Mar 2, 2011 at 22:38
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Although this is really a shopping recommendation question, I'm going to have to really put my support behind DNS Made Easy. Until someone (probably their competitors) used a DDOS of terrifying scale, they had a 100% uptime (and can still claim above 99.999%).

We've used them without trouble for years and years, and their web interface is very easy to use and understand and they support all the record types. I think you can even edit your zone file manually if you so chose.

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  • Yes, my apologies, it is a borderline shopping recommendation. I say "borderline" because it is plausible that simply due to NS being such a popular (large) corporation, asking for user-experience seems like a relatively valid, (and possibly) long-lived question. Never the less, I would consider changing the pitch to promote a better learning experience, but at this point I'm afraid it may invalidate some of the existing answers.
    – joxl
    Mar 3, 2011 at 2:00
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I've also been using NetSol for many years, and have been very satisfied with their services. DNS management is great, has everything I need, including txt, cname, a and MX records.

In my opinion, if they are your registar, it's a no brainer.

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