

GoDaddy's New "Selective DNS Blackouts" Policy - rednaught
http://rscott.org/dns/GoDaddy_Selective_DNS_Blackouts.htm
And a response from GoDaddy:<p>http://rscott.org/dns/GoDaddy_Selective_DNS_Blackouts_Update.htm
======
ghshephard
No major DNS provider would engage in a "Selective DNS Blackout" because of
resource constraints - DNS is one of those protocols that is both
embarrassingly parallel, as well as super efficient to serve. It's not
unreasonable to see a well tuned, inexpensive (< $5K) DNS server provide on
the order of 100,000 responses/second. And if you want to serve a million
responses/second - just scale horizontally and add the resolvers to your VIP
pool on your load balancer.

This article doesn't pass the common sense test. Not to say that GoDaddy isn't
engaging in this selective DNS blackout policy, just that it's not because of
a underinvestment in their infrastructure.

~~~
bartwe
Maybe the article has been changed but it indeed says that it most likely not
about cost but about pushing a 'premium' dns service.

~~~
ghshephard
That makes a lot more sense. It would be a lot better if the DNS provider said
something like, "First million DNS entries served is free, after that, we
charge you $0.50/million queries" (Amazon pricing for DNS)

Then, you respond to every request as fast as you can. (Note, this also
provides an incentive to the customer to jack up the TTL on the resource
records, so 99.99% of the requests are handled at the caching servers instead
of GoDaddy)

------
johngalt
You don't buy DNS service from Godaddy, you buy registration. The DNS service
is a courtesy.

For all this article states here's much more likely what's happening:

1\. People are using the "free DNS service" for high traffic sites rather than
rolling their own or buying a paid DNS service. Then setting their TTLs to 1
hour to make changes easier.

2\. Godaddy is paying real $$ to host DNS for all those domains and in some
cases could be revenue negative on a domain because of it. Regardless of how
cheap you think DNS hosting is, Godaddy makes $3-4/year or less on a domain
registration.

3\. Godaddy is responding by throttling sources of extreme (possibly
automated) DNS query traffic.

The author is someone going to the cheapest registrar and complaining that the
complimentary serivces have limits. Once those limits are found he is trying
to paint a "cheap/greedy corporation" picture. If the author is looking to
write about underinvestment in infrastructure, he should consider an
autobiography.

------
rednaught
And Godaddy's response:

[http://rscott.org/dns/GoDaddy_Selective_DNS_Blackouts_Update...](http://rscott.org/dns/GoDaddy_Selective_DNS_Blackouts_Update.htm)

~~~
dredmorbius
That just doesn't make sense.

Whether it's R. Scott Perry or GoDaddy's PR flack who're confusing DNS with
WHOIS data, I'm not sure.

I've encountered throttle limits on WHOIS queries from numerous registrars,
going back years. In the normal course of events, it's not necessary to query
WHOIS a whole lot, but some legitimate uses (spam and other forms of abuse
fighting, for example) are ... expediated somewhat by access to, say, contact
information for a given network.

Some years ago I investigated caching whois clients and found jwhois to be
reasonably good (it presumes information about whois servers which isn't
always accurate) and both greatly speeds up response times and reduces repeat
requests for a given entity.

------
imrehg
I'm still confused why would anyone want to by their domain name from GoDaddy,
after all this press they get. It looks like a horrible company in general
(not just this story) and everyone giving them money just helps them suck
more. If I could see they are improving, then a current suckiness can be
forgiven, but when actually getting worse?

~~~
lazyjeff
It shouldn't be confusing. It's the price.

Domains are a commodity, and $7.69 for a domain (after applying one of the
widely-available coupons) is the lowest price in the industry. If someone
registers many domains, this adds up quickly.

~~~
buff-a
Netsol, register, etc all charge $6.99 if you ask.

~~~
nknight
In my book, that makes them about as slimy as GoDaddy.

It's one thing if you're a huge-volume customer or have unique needs, but
companies that have two price lists -- one for the far more efficient (for
BOTH parties) online sales channel, and a lower one for the human-intervention
sales channel, just disgust me.

~~~
sudont
You get that everywhere in media buys, and yes, a large segment of people
interacting on the web—the ones who don’t know code—view the domain name as a
media buy.

Remember color.com?

------
dotBen
Domain registration != DNS hosting

I continue to be amazed at how many startups (and other companies, high
profile individuals, etc) rely on GoDaddy for their DNS rather than having a
properly managed DNS hosting as part of their web-hosting solution.

DNS tacked on to domain registration is a throwaway after thought - certainly
for GoDaddy, regardless of whether this 'blackout' is true or not.

------
freddealmeida
I moved away from GoDaddy years ago. They have proven themselves to be
irrationally self-interested. This is just one more reason no one should use
them. While the domain cost is low, ancillary costs are high: not to mention
moral cost for using a company that kills Elephants for sport.

~~~
sp332
The elephant was attacking a town, right? It was going to be killed in defense
anyway. The town managed to sell "kill rights" to a rich idiot, good for them.

------
amirrustam
What do you guys use instead of GoDaddy? Just interested to see what others
prefer out there. I was gonna do a domain transfer to GoDaddy, but after
reading this I won't be considering them.

~~~
statenjason
I transferred from GoDaddy to name.com about a year ago by recommendation of a
friend. It's nice to not be bombarded with GD babes and just enter my account
to do what I need to do.

~~~
jamesbritt
I use godaddy to just do what I want, and really like the ui. Maybe I just
know where to click but I'm not bombarded by anything.

~~~
libraryatnight
I guess since I've been using them so long I'm in the same boat, I know
exactly where to go. You can even go straight to your domain manager by
visiting dcc.godaddy.com -- quick and easy.

------
davidu
lots of words, not a lot of evidence.

I know quite a few ops and abuse folks at godaddy who have root or enable, but
this doesn't seem substantiated enough for me to even waste their time with.

The title is linkbait. There is no such official policy that we know of or
that this bloggers knows of. This person is making a supposition, at best.

~~~
rednaught
I added a link in another comment to the response he received from Godaddy.
Sorry it has fallen through the depths here.

------
politician
tldr: The new owners of GoDaddy have decided to block DNS traffic rather then
invest in their infrastructure to handle the additional load. See also:
bridges, roads, wireless carriers.

~~~
speleding
"GoDaddy have decided to block DNS traffic rather then invest in their
infrastructure to handle the additional load"

The article doesn't say that at all, it specifically mentions that this is not
the reason for the block. Did you read it before commenting?

~~~
politician
Yeah, I did, but I accidentally included information from the "GoDaddy
response" linked by rednaught. If you didn't read the 2nd link, then I
understand how it sounds wrong. In retrospect, I should have replied to
rednaught's post.

------
soult
By the way, the domain rscott.org is registered with GoDaddy.

------
ez77
I like how he uses mostly POSH [1] for his markup. Too bad he must appeal to
something like the H4 element in order to include the author's name and the
publication date.

It is difficult to understand that an academic such as Berners-Lee came up
with prominently article-oriented HTML and did not include an AUTHOR tag or
DATE tag.

[1] <http://microformats.org/wiki/posh>

~~~
ars
Um, what does this have to do with the article?

~~~
ez77
It is a technical point, in a technical forum. It is fairly common for HNers
to comment, say, on the CSS technology used in an article about the US
deficit, and they are generally not downvoted or scolded. Similarly, my
comment is that the author essentially appeals to no CSS at all.

~~~
ars
You really don't get this? People comment on the css when it interesting and
you can learn from it. Saying someone didn't use css is not interesting at
all.

It's not a design page, it's not an html tutorial, it's an article on DNS, the
html and css make difference at all.

Try to answer (in your mind) the question: "So what?" to both your posts.
Merely raising a point isn't really enough - there has to be a reason to raise
it.

~~~
ez77
Since this is no longer about my comment, but rather about me, let me open my
response by saying that what I really don't get is what drove you to consider
my uniniteresting comment worthy of your time and words, instead of simply
downvoting it, just as many people did (some upvoted, though!).

 _Merely raising a point isn't really enough - there has to be a reason to
raise it._

My point, in case it was not clear, is that there is merit and elegance to not
using CSS at all. It is (arguably!) the purest way of exalting content:
forgetting completely about presentational aspects. My point, maybe not well
explained first, is that it is noteworthy to see this kind of choice in 2011
by a tech-savvy author. It may not be interesting to you, but it is for more
than one person. See, e.g., [1], [2].

I accept this may not be interesting to you, and even to most HNers. Rest
assured that if (and only if) I find an overwhelming proof of the latter, I
will avoid this kind of comment in the future. But, for the love of Ken, don't
even try to take ownership of as subjective a concept as "interesting". Heck,
an article on anything at all on HN brings up well-received comments on ping
times, DNS servers, JS file delivery, etc. and, um, that may have nothing to
do with the content of the article itself. That's one of the main reasons I,
for one, love HN.

    
    
      [1] http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats/IRC/2007-04-06#T091456
      [2] http://naked.dustindiaz.com/

~~~
ars
I did not downvote your comment, and I replied because I felt bad for you. You
didn't seem (and still don't) to get what was wrong with your comment.

Your comments about css etc are perfectly fine, and interesting, in an of
themself - but not in the context of that article. In the context of that
article they were off topic.

Your reply indicates that you think that if the topic is interesting at all
(your footnotes) then it can be placed anywhere, and that is not so. Comments
need to stay on topic to the article they are attached to. It would be one
thing if the topic were css and you were brining up a side note. But this
article was about dns, css was not on anyone else's mind.

~~~
ez77
I appreciate your clarification. For what is worth, I personally don’t use
downvoting at all (except by accident!): I simply don’t upvote.

Now, please bear in mind that while you just replied

 _Your comments about css etc are perfectly fine, and interesting, in an of
themself - but not in the context of that article. In the context of that
article they were off topic._

you previously stated

 _People comment on the css when it interesting and you can learn from it.
Saying someone didn't use css is not interesting at all._

I was obviously replying to the latter.

Let me emphasize a point you’re not addressing. Even though vote counts are
gone, relative positioning of comments give you an idea of what HN as a
community deems interesting. Clearly my original comment was not considered
enlightening, engaging, nor for that matter inappropriate. But, again, plenty
of popular comments are decidedly off topic with respect to the article’s
content: DNS, webserver used, whois information, ping times, JS usage,
accessibility, color choice, cookies, character encoding, HTML semantics, etc.

But that’s the thing: the moment you provide a URL in HN, many aspects that go
way beyond the actual content are generally not considered off topic. Whether
that is right or wrong, whether this means “not getting it” are, in my
opinion, entirely pointless mental exercises. Clearly, as soon as this changes
significantly I will heed the cue and adjust, possibly looking for venues
where this “off-topic” chatter is deemed acceptable and even fun.

In any event, thanks again for clarifying your point. Cheers.

------
kennywinker
Can someone explain the implications of this a little clearer? It sounds bad,
but I don't understand why.

~~~
lisper
If you use GoDaddy your sites may not work because GoDaddy is too cheap to
provision enough servers to handle the load. So don't use GoDaddy.

~~~
rednaught
A further note: Also if you use an external monitoring service(e.g. Pingdom,
Wormly, Exactstate) that performs DNS traversals for each check instead of
relying on a recursive server, this likely explains any increase in false
alarms.

~~~
lamnk
Yeah, after I read your comment I recheck my Pingdom's logs, those weird
timeout errors since one year ago are now gone (I've switched to CloudFlare).
Back then I was scratching my head wondering why Pingdom generated so much
errors from random different locations while people reported that they were
able to access my sites jut fine. Thanks!

------
beedogs
Just another reason I don't do business with GoDaddy. And neither should you.

------
veyron
Is there a market nowadays for a new low-cost registrar / hosting provider?

~~~
EwanToo
For registrars, the margins are basically non-existant, low cost + high volume
is where they're all already at.

For .com domains, Verisign charge all registrars $7.34 per registration (going
up to $7.85 in January 2012), so when you consider GoDaddy charge $11.99 (less
with various offers), it's not a big margin business.

------
jonursenbach
Since when is GoDaddy a monopoly?

~~~
libraryatnight
Yea, it seems like a trend these days that if someone controls a majority
market share people on the internet start screaming "monopoly!"

Go Daddy has lots of competition, they're just outselling all of them.

------
georgieporgie
I tallied up all the votes in a HN thread about registrars and settled on
NearlyFreeSpeech.net. Their payment system is weird (you fund your pool of
money from which charges are deducted), but otherwise it was quick, painless,
and not full of creepy, sexualized imagery and cheesy, repetitive upselling
techniques.

GoDaddy is a bit cheaper if you spend the time to scrounge up coupon codes,
but wow, NearlyFreeSpeech was the first time my domain registrar's website
didn't give me a headache.

~~~
seabee
NFS was a GoDaddy reseller, last time I checked.

~~~
josephb
According to the NFS FAQ they use Public Domain Registry.

[http://faq.nearlyfreespeech.net/section/domainregistration/a...](http://faq.nearlyfreespeech.net/section/domainregistration/accredited#accredited)

------
RyanKearney
People honestly use GoDaddy for anything other than domain names? NEVER use
the same company to host your DNS as you registered your domain with. At that
point you're pretty much putting all your eggs in one basket.

