Mark Jeftovic
Mark Jeftovic is the founder and president of easyDNS.com - the DNS hosting provider & domain name registrar, a libertarian, and former Director to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA).
In his copious spare time he blogs about business on the internet, moderates the ChessForums.org website, and plays guitar in The Parkdale Hookers, an indie power-pop group who releases all of their music under a creative commons license.
Managed DNS considered harmful
Outsourcing your DNS is not a magic bullet.
There is frequently a tendency toward letting one’s guard down when it comes to threats to your IT systems. Absent an immediate “hair-on-fire” situation, we may relax and assume all is well. Yet malicious activity such as hacking, phishing, malware, and DDoS attacks never stop accelerating in terms of frequency and intensity.
So it’s important to have a “Plan B” DNS solution in place and ready before a crisis hits. That way, even if you’re taken off guard, you still have a backup plan and can respond appropriately.
DNS is one of those things nobody really thinks about, until it stops working. The first time easyDNS went off the air on April 15, 2003, it induced a type of existential crisis in me. That summer, after meditating intensely on the situation, I came away with the conclusion that the centralized managed DNS model, as we understood it then, was doomed.
My response at the time was a proposal to pivot to a DNS appliance with decentralized deployments, but centralized monitoring and management. That concept was promptly shot down my co-founders and we’ve kept on with the centralized, hosted DNS model to this day.
The core problem is this: there are many reasons to elect to outsource your DNS to a managed DNS provider. Those reasons include: