Who is using ULTRADNS?

bump....

www.daemon.be is way better than ultradns.

Don't use them but they call me every week to offer their services.

How can they make such a claim?
WG

Every week only? I was getting calls daily from them... I put a end to that just the other day (atleast I think I did).

same here

They tell its because they don't lose visitors, whatever that means.
btw ND, sexsearch, amazon, etc...use them

No idea what that means, why would a service providers DNS not be up to par to theirs? And what makes theirs better?
WG

from the email:

"How does UltraDNS increase traffic 4 to 12% and reduce page loading
times for e-commerce companies by simply managing your end-users DNS
requests. This is accomplished through 2 main variables: 1) our Non-BIND
proprietary software guarantees that every DNS request will be handled.
The latest version of BIND software (the software currently used for
your DNS requests) accounts for a 2% loss of traffic because it cannot
handle the number of DNS requests being sent across the entire internet.
even with the new versions, patches and consistent maintenance updates
to the most recent version of BIND you're still losing 2% of your
traffic on average every day. 2) Our 35 million dollar Global Network,
with hundreds of names servers across the globe, is used exclusively for
DNS and eliminates latency and time out issues because we route the end
user to the closest geographical node. E-Commerce sites see a 2 to 10%
increase in site traffic simply due to the elimination of latency issues
associated with DNS requests (eliminating timeout issues). When you
total 1) and 2) together, you (as an e-commerce site) will see an
increase in traffic anywhere between 4 to 12% immediately and
continually. In an e-commerce business model, you get an immediate
Return on Investment."

Interesting pitch. Anyone an expert in DNS here that can actually validate if this is actually true or if this is just hype? The client list you provided above is definitely an interesting selling point though, I'll give you that.
WG

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=590094

I tried them back in the day. One word, SCAM!!!

If you want to start paying 1K for your dns provider, knock yourself out. My advice, its total and utter bullshit.

yeah, interresting...

BoNgHiTtA I agree.... it's sux

\\||//
(@_@)
/ \
| $$$ |
/_/\_\

When they called today, I reminded them I asked them not to call me again the other 3 dozen times they called. They began listing my domains and I interrupted, said "yeah, I have those and another hundred but just don't call me again" and they said I'd be pulled off their list.

I'll believe it when I no longer see them on Caller ID.

it's horse shit

edit: host your dns with us and we'll beat their claim by more than double! and if you beleive that I have a lovely soup bowel Id like to sell you too!

Amazon does 8.5 billion in revenue making them 1000 times bigger than me. So if they want to bill me $5000 per month, then that means they should be billing Amazon about 5 million a month or 60 million a year to handle their DNS. Even if they give a 50% discount to big customers 30 million a year would be outrageous.

All I know is that they are ripping me off

Dave Levine
SEXTOY.com
310 358 0932

Hmm.. Amazon.com does use them. Why? lol

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
udns2.ultradns.net. 52273 IN A 204.74.101.1
udns1.ultradns.net. 50561 IN A 204.69.234.1
pdns6.ultradns.co.uk. 50647 IN A 204.74.115.1
pdns5.ultradns.info. 50672 IN A 204.74.114.1
pdns4.ultradns.org. 50672 IN A 199.7.69.1
pdns3.ultradns.org. 50672 IN A 199.7.68.1
pdns2.ultradns.net. 51078 IN A 204.74.109.1
pdns1.ultradns.net. 51078 IN A 204.74.108.1

but not for Alexa
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns2.alexa.com. 50541 IN A 209.237.236.229
ns2.unitedlayer.com. 148116 IN A 209.237.230.22
ns1.alexa.com. 50541 IN A 209.237.236.228
ns1.unitedlayer.com. 148116 IN A 209.237.230.11

yes for IMDB
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
udns2.ultradns.net. 52216 IN A 204.74.101.1
udns1.ultradns.net. 50504 IN A 204.69.234.1

I know nothing of DNS but has anyone ever not gotten to a site for some weird reason? I haven't noticed dropping on 2% of the sites I try to hit, lol.

I would agree that dns does make a difference. For instance, i use several backbone provider dns servers for my cable modem, as opposed to my isp's dns server, makes my surfing about 20% quicker to connect.

Overall size doesn't necisarily mean technical prowess.

They were calling me at 5am, twice in one week, so I just got fed up with how aggresive they were.

Good that I asked.

I know a fair amount about DNS, and I'd say that what UltraDNS is claiming is largely crap.

Now... if you're GAP or Amazon or somebody that has an insane amount of traffic (literally enough to overload DNS requests), then *maybe* you'd see a marginal increase... but even that seems pretty shaky.

You have to realize that DNS is a distributed architecture; when Bob Potatohead who has Comcast types in yourdomain.com, Bob's computer asks Comcast's DNS where your site is located (which IP address.) ONLY if no one else on Comcast has asked for your site (sent an email to you or loaded the webpage) will Comcast's DNS even ask your DNS for info; otherwise the info is held in Comcast's DNS until it expires or they dump their cache. And it's the same with every other ISP.

So.. that being the case, UltraDNS is only responding to requests coming from ISPs that your surfers are using, not from any individual surfers. Given that the majority of adult surfers are using broadband, they tend to be using large ISPs with their own large DNS networks, who will have already cached your information from the first request. Therefore, no hit to UltraDNS, no "increase in speed."

Given that minimal level of traffic, the likelihood that whatever DNS your web host runs is going to get clobbered or overrun enough to actually lose traffic is near zero. THAT, IN FACT, IS WHY TWO DNS SERVERS ARE REQUIRED; in case one is busy, slow, offline, or otherwise unavailable, traffic automatically fails over to the other server(s). Many ISPs and even domain registrars now offer 5 or 6 DNS servers free; Enom, for example, provides redundant service on 5 DNS servers, geographically spread. So does ZoneEdit. Enom's DNS is free with domain registration services; ZoneEdit's costs about $5/YEAR!!

Oh... and UltraDNS's argument that their proprietary DNS is so much better than BIND? Hogwash. BIND may be old, but about 90% of the 'Net runs on it, has for years. It's solid, reliable, does its job quite well. If you *really* don't want to use BIND, there are several alternate DNS servers out there you can buy for fairly cheap.

So... I hope you can see that, absent the folks with insanely large amounts of traffic (and, perhaps, even for them) there's very little reason to believe that switching to somebody's whiz-bang DNS is going to have any effect on your traffic.

Unless a team of offshore people clicking to your site to artificially boost stats is included for free with an UltraDNS account

UltraDNS has accounts that are only like $4.99/month + $1.00/month per domain.

-Merlin

Dont do it!! next will be limelight to hit you up. I did some research on them and companies that were having problems were because they were using these services 90% of the time.

I had never heard that they could do that.

we use them, have used them for years, and their service is spectacular.

DNS is one of the single largest points of failure on the internet and it is absolutely true that a significant amount of requests for your domain name are dropped.

Previously we used our host's (several of them) DNS but we found that host's primary focus is not on DNS, their dns is typically run by bind, very eploitable, typically they have a few boxes handling far too many domains, and every time a change is made to somebody else who uses you hosting service the DNS/Bind Daemon has to be restarted.

More importantly however is the fact that at any given time there are routing issues on the web and a request from one ISP's dns to another's simply may fail. A repeated request may succeed, but in a competitive market place where you are simply one of 1000 links on a web page, why would you choose anything other than guaranteeing that your page loads first and fastest?

The other reason we use ultradns is that they have a distributed network much like a good content caching network. If you are in california you can bet that you're getting your dns requests served from a location that is near to you rather than a server located on the other side of the planet.

If you're running a tgp, or it you're just submitting galleries then yeah it probably isn't a big issue.... but if you are a sponsor or a biller I see no excuse to pinch pennies on such important core issues because bottom line... ANY FAILED REQUEST IS A POTENTIAL FAILED JOIN.

Would you rather use a sponsor who's entire DNS system rests on the capabilities of one or two tired tech's at 3am or one who spends the extra money to take no chances?

Done ranting.
See sig.

I wonder why those companies use them if they don't work

Interesting... about the pinching pennies part. Did your hosting costs skyrocket when you began using the service or is it a relatively small increase in costs for huge increases in overall traffic?

All i know if they've called here like 15 times and are starting to piss me off. I told them if I want to use them I'll call them. Worst part is every 3 times it's a new sales rep. I don't know something about them just bugs me.

Can I change from my ISPs DNS to UltraDns for my home connection?

Holy shit - Limelight bugs as much as Ultradns - BOTH need to... ah nevermind, it's Friday and I'm trying to stay in a good mood.
Glad I'm not the only one

It's a small increase in cost... but it can't really be seen as a change in "traffic" per-se... what it does is add another layer of *reliability*, when some sites might go down cause of a dns server failure or a problem with the dns infrastrcuture ours are solid like a rock.

If that was confusing then basically just look at it this way... it's like those fancy braking systems that luxury cars have... yeah you don't notice that big of a difference during day to day driving... but when you're about to die it sure helps

Ah I see they sold you on the Tijuana Supremo package.

sure you do notice...

I'd prefer not to discuss in this thread, but if you want more info about UltraDNS, then hit me up when you see me in Phoenix and I'll give you both sides of the coin....

-- Bill

i talked to a guy at ultradns a couple days ago, and quite a few large adult programs are using them, i was amazed at the info about their system, looked through their control panel, and was pretty amazed at the overall product.

interesting

In my experience, they told me I would have 500,000 queries per month and would bill me $600 a month for that. So why not?

Then they showed my traffic increase 30% per month and then eventually 100% per month and they wanted to bill me over $5000 per month in a 2 year contract!!
After i shut them off in January, in Feb they said I had over 500,000 queries which how much traffic they originally said I would have when pointing all my traffic to them. Yet, I was sending them none!

Their tracking is faulty and even worse, they are in complete denial and have no interest in working with me on it. That is why I am on here venting because they don't want to discuss it with me.

Avoid them at all costs!

Dave Levine
SEXTOY.com

I thought all this BS is why god gave us dedicated servers.

I'd like to see the data on that. For one thing, it would be nearly impossible to collect, since DNS by definition is a distributed architecture and it would be nearly impossble to tell how many requests are dropped.

It is absolutely true that most ISPs have maybe one guy (if they are lucky) that really understands DNS. However, as I said, both Enom and ZoneEdit run very reliable, highly diverse DNS networks, with servers spread all over, and in the case of Enom, DNS is free, while ZoneEdit charges only a few bucks a year, depending on traffic. And anyone running DNS that knows what they're doing will never reboot multiple DNS servers at the same time, so the restart issue is pretty much nonexistent. Even if a restart is required, it takes only a few seconds at most. As for the security of BIND, it's not perfect, but it does run about 90% of DNS on the Net, and when the occasional exploit is found, because it's such a crucial app, patches are generally issued near instantly. But the bigger issue is below.

This sounds like the UltraDNS pitch, and it's only somewhat valid. If you have a highly trafficked site, the likelihood is that SOMEBODY on just about every dialup or broadband provider has accessed your site within the last 6-12 hours.

If so, your site's DNS info is ALREADY IN CACHE at the local ISP, and your DNS (or Ultra, if you use them) will never even get a DNS hit. Only if none of the subscribers to the broadband or dialup provider that Joe Pornviewer uses has recently requested DNS info will Jpe's provider even make a request. Otherwise, it gets pulled from the local ISP's DNS cache, without ever hitting your site DNS.

And, assuming that no one else from the European ISP where the request ir originating has requested to view the site, this will yield an increase in response time of maybe 50-100ms... for the very first request for that domain name made in a 12 hour period. Otherwise, no one else on that ISP will ever touch UltraDNS at all.

But even if it's 100ms faster, the actual response to the site itself is what really matters. All of the arguments about network latency and traffic delays to DNS apply even more so to HTTP traffic. So what happens if you get lightning fast DNS response and there's a logjam at one of the peering points? You lose the customer anyway, as they won't be able to see the site, even if they have the correct IP address to your server. So it's rather pointless.

Honestly, as an affiliate, I'd be far more concerned about the reliability of the network where the actual servers live than the DNS. If the argument is reliability, I'd much rather see the money spent with UltraDNS go toward a geographically diverse load balancing system, with servers in two different data centers so that if one has catastrophic problems, the other one can still handle traffic. Those sorts of problems are actually far more common -- a good DDOS attack can take an entire data center offline for hours -- and with servers spread among different data centers and proper failover routing and/or load balancing, the sites will still be live.

Totally reliable DNS won't mean much if the data center has issues, and that is where far, far more failures occur -- at the server, not at DNS.

good post!

Ultradns caters more to the corporate world where they buy stuff they dont need just because it exists.

this is true...

dont use them, will do in a couple of weeks!

Interesting post, I think you're artfully discounting all the valid reasons that I pointed out however.... if that one hit was a hit that would become a sale then it is indeed worth saving. Is a different of 100ms worth delivering? You bet, studies have been done indicating that consumers make up their mind about whether they "like" a site within the first 15 milliseconds... could be bullshit but hey.

Just to clarify, quickbuck not only uses ultradns but we *also* use a fat load balanced system with a 100% SLA global distributed caching network. The only thing we serve up is the dynamic pages.