I recently found myself wanting to leave my old DNS provider ‘cos of user interface spam & feeling out of synch with their ethics. I didn’t feel like spending a lot of time figuring out a new DNS provider, so like a well-marketed-too person, I chose one I’d heard positive things about about: Hover.com.
Far from cheap (in comparison to some) but I was paying for convenience, less spam, and peace of mind so I felt okay about the rate.What sealed the deal was the ”concierge service” that dealt with my old service provider for me. I’m technically, and have been managing DNS for eons, but since I was paying I like having it done for me.
One over at Hover.com I found the user interface nice/clean and simple, but one thing felt seriously lacking. I cannot control the TTL (Time to Live) … i.e. how long a second will be cached. I contacted their support, ‘cos clearly I was missing some advanced user interface or something. Nope … per Hover.com support …
“…about the DNS TTL. The 15 minutes (which can’t be changed) doesn’t impact our servers in any big way and it is one of the recommended time periods for a small setting. While I can’t answer for why 15 minutes is used, I can say that it definitely makes changes a lot faster for most of our customers that do not know a lot about DNS and how it works. The 15 minutes TTL does not make a big impact on our server and on the internet with speeds being at broadband levels, the looking up for DNS information takes a few mere milliseconds to gather the Zone file (or DNS records) from the name servers. We find the 15 minutes a good balance between performance and speed of updates that our customers are looking for since we don’t allow changes to the TTL on their domain names.”
Well, I work very hard make my sites perform well in part ‘cos I know that people need fast page loads or they’ll loose interest & click away. I understand that Hover.com like this simplicity, and that it only impacts “a little” (I should check those millisecond numbers, ‘cos I’m skeptical of how it’d play out worldwide or as multiple DNS servers all proxy the queries upstream finding no caches, or even over slower home systems) but first impressions count. I don’t want every new visitor to my sites to have to wait as the whole chain of DNS servers from them to Hover.com chat about this thing, like some chain of goldfish playing telephone (never remembering a thing.)
I’ve been schooled in setting DNS TTL low for when changes are coming up (and I am okay with having to plan ahead dropping the TTL in advance) and setting the DNS TTL high for “the rest of the 99% of the time when changes aren’t occurring” so the distributed DNS system can cache. I don’t want a one size fits all approach.
I’m writing this ‘cos I’d like other folks like me to be aware of this restriction before they land in Hover.com and then cannot find the options. Also, if anybody think my thinking is out of date (and I know I formed it eons ago) I’d be happy to hear that input also. Tweet me at @adam_jack if you have thoughts.
As of now, although I respect Hover.com’s choice for it’s business I cannot live with it. I’m looking for a more sophisticated provider.