DNS server reliability

**Denisl** · #1 (**permalink**) 16-05-2009, 10:21

I am very interested in the business hosting plan that garuntees100% uptime but am wondering how the DNS servers compare.

I assume that if the DNS server goes down, then the the site will not work.

Are DNS servers more reliable anyway?

Is it a good idea to to use a separate company from the hosting for the DNS?

Any suggestions on good places for DNS?

**eUKhost.com** · #2 (**permalink**) 17-05-2009, 20:30

Hi Denis,

Technology that we use on our Business hosting servers is completely different. IP address of your website will never change even if the live server goes down. IP addresses switch to the slave server as soon as master server goes down, so there's no reason for the DNS service to go down.

You are most welcome to consider a third party DNS service provider like dnsmadeeasy.com, but you don't need to consider third party DNS service if you consider our Business hosting service.

**Denisl** · #3 (**permalink**) 18-05-2009, 12:45

Thank you for your reply

My situation is that I am mmoving a site to your business hosting from a hosting company where I have not been pleased by the uptime and connectivity.

I am considering leaving the domain name with the old company and simply point it to the new site ip.

If I do this, am I likely to still suffer connectivity problems?

**Jack** · #4 (**permalink**) 18-05-2009, 13:16

There won't be any connectivity issues as the name servers will propogate from our servers. We have many customers pointing name servers and keeping their domain registered with their existing domain registrar.

**Denisl** · #5 (**permalink**) 18-05-2009, 13:35

Thank you for clearing that one up for me - I don't have a good enough understanding of how that side of things works

**eUKhost.com** · #6 (**permalink**) 18-05-2009, 20:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Denisl

Thank you for clearing that one up for me - I don't have a good enough understanding of how that side of things works

Hi Denis,

DNS( Domain Name System) topic is slightly complicated, but I will try to explain how DNS works in few lines. DNS and Nameservers are one and the same.

Your visitors browser will first contact central registry for the type of domain you have. If you have a .com or .net TLD domain then first contact will be made with ICANN, if your domain is a .co.uk domain then Nominet will become the first point of contact.

Browser will detect the registrar of domain from ICANN / Nominet registry and then proceed to next step which is DNS. Your registrar holds information about the DNS of your domain name and DNS nameservers guide visitors browser to the server which hosts your website. If you point your nameservers to our nameservers, then the visitors browser will know which server is hosting your website and email service.

visitors browser will then look for A record and SOA record on our server. A record points to the IP address assigned to your domain name and SOA record means "Start of Authority" which allows your website to work from our server. Our server creates A record and SOA records by default once we add your account on our server, so there's absolutely nothing to be concerned about these 2 records, but your website will never work if we miss out any of these 2 records.

Our server also holds your MX records ( Mail exchanger records) which is extremely important for Email Service. You can change this MX record to make your email service work from a different server. You can add multiple MX entries to set priorities for email service.

I hope I have helped you to understand how DNS(Nameservers) works.