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Newsletter
July / 2008
Greetings!

DNS has been in the news a lot lately, so we too are going to focus on DNS in this installment of our newsletter.

Below you will find information about a recently discovered DNS server flaw (don't worry, our service is safe!), how to optimize your domain when using our DNS Manager, and if DNS issues have been giving you trouble lately, you'll want to read our last item.

Recently Discovered DNS Flaw

Our DNS Hosting Service IS Safe!

Many of you are coming across some news of a multi-vendor patch that was made available to fix a recently discovered vulnerability that makes it easier to poison DNS Cache servers. This bug only effects DNS Caching servers. Our DNS Manager is an Authoritative Service, not a Caching Service, so this bug does not impact us, your DNS Hosting is safe!

There was a lot of mystery around the discovery of this bug. The person who uncovered it kept it secret and discussed it only with key DNS software makers so that they could work on and simultaneously release a fix before the bad guys figured it out! A patch was released on July 8, with a promise that 30 days later, the details of the flaw would be revealed, to give people time to patch their servers. A few days ago, the cat was let out of the bag. Details of the flaw began appearing in blogs and recently it was discovered that exploit code for this vulnerability is now making the rounds.

Needless to say, if you run a DNS Caching server that looks up external host names, even if its internally protected by a firewall, you need to patch now!

The More Name Servers, The Better!

If You Use Our DNS Manager, List More Than Two!

Our network of DNS servers is 4 strong, with a 5th one in test. However, every day we discover some customers who only list 2 of our name servers with their domain name. No matter who you register your domain name with (and of course we hope its us!) you should be able to enter more than 2 name servers responsible for your domain name.

If you use our DNS Manager and want the most reliable service, list at least 4 of our servers! Here is our current list of name servers:

ns1.lanechange.net
ns2.lanechange.net
ns3.lanechange.net
ns4.lanechange.net

We also occasionally see some clients listing external name servers that are not part of our DNS network along side our own servers. This is almost always a bad idea. The information you enter into our DNS Manager is distributed to our name servers with additional data that will usually not match up with that of foreign DNS servers. Plus, using more than one network of servers means you need to constantly keep updating your data in two places. This can cause a mismatch of information that could destabilize your domain name resolution and make troubleshooting difficult.

The bottom line is you are paying for a service we know is reliable, but only if it is used the way it was designed. Our service is meant to operate independently of other services; list all our servers, and only our servers, and you will have reliable name resolution!
 
Need Help Troubleshooting Domain Issues?
Try our DNS Consulting Service

Sometimes DNS issues can confuse even the most seasoned IT pros! DNS is one of those services that are usually setup and forgotten until something goes wrong, figuring out what was done can be a daunting task.

We are here to help!

Are you having issues with name resolution for your domain? Need help setting up SPF records to work with your mail server or debugging reverse pointer records? Then drop us a line!

Our DNS consulting service starts at $50/hour. We will provide you with a comprehensive report on issues detected with your domain and provide recommendations to correct them.


Looking for Do It Yourself DNS Troubleshooting Help?

LaneChange.Net has partnered with DNSstuff to offer you access to DNS and general domain troubleshooting tools. If you would rather troubleshoot your own issues, DNSstuff offers a plethora of free and subscription based tools to help keep your domains in good health.

We hope you enjoyed this month's newsletter. If you have any questions or comments, we would love to hear from you.
 
Sincerely,
 
Rob

Robert Schwartz
LaneChange.Net