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DDOS on Namecheap Free DNS and Default DNS V2

status.namecheap.com

51–60 of 119 posts

Re: DDOS on Namecheap Free DNS and Default DNS V2

#51
post #7
post #3

Any good suggestions for alternative DNS providers?

I moved most of my stuff to Route53 awhile back and for the most part I don't regret it.

We looked at Route 53, but would that make a difference today if your domain is registered at Namecheap?

If Namecheap is down, it does not get redirected.

Re: DDOS on Namecheap Free DNS and Default DNS V2

#52
post #46
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for future reference, it's usually considered a good idea to put your status page on completely independent infrastructure so that it stays up even when the rest of your stuff goes down. A status page that doesn't work during an outage isn't particularly useful.

Good point. The status page is on another cloud but since this is a DNS issue, the subdomain is down. In the future, we'll investigate running this page on a secondary DNS.

According to whois for namecheap.com, the DNS for that domain is hosted on dynect.net, and "host status.namecheap.com" resolves just fine (to 204.232.212.56), so it does not appear to be a DNS issue that is preventing your status page from working.

Re: DDOS on Namecheap Free DNS and Default DNS V2

#53
post #41

If your site is down and you are on v2, Switch to v1. It only takes a minute and it works.

I switched and it's the same, still down.

At first I thought the same. I went in to edit records, and I hit save. I checked again and it was working. I assumed there was just a delay of a minute or so and that clicking save was a coincidence.

My domain is on v1 now and its still working.

Re: DDOS on Namecheap Free DNS and Default DNS V2

#54
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDOS attacks are not up to Namecheap. You want money, go talk to the people doing it. These are very hard to prevent.

[deleted]

While it's not a customer friendly viewpoint, it's not exactly what happened here. You have to consider what is being provided and how much was paid into it for said service. Had they been paying a lot of money for solid DNS I could agree with you, but they weren't.

It's a completely free service. With an extremely low price for domains.

Even though it's become almost a standard for domain registrars to provide DNS, it's still free. I've been using NC for years for my business (also a free service) and the downtime for what it provides has been mostly minimal.

Now if I was paying namecheap specifically for enterprise DNS something like $10/month or $40/year and it included DDoS protection then yes I should be compensated. Namecheap gave people what they paid for - a domain, the DNS is just a really great perk.

Re: DDOS on Namecheap Free DNS and Default DNS V2

#55
post #3

Any good suggestions for alternative DNS providers?

Instead of putting all of your eggs in (yet another) one basket, for a site with critical availability requirements I would distribute DNS over multiple providers. If any one provider goes down it is less likely to hurt overall site availability.

Yes, multiple DNS providers should be the way to go.

Re: DDOS on Namecheap Free DNS and Default DNS V2

#56
post #52
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. The status page is on another cloud but since this is a DNS issue, the subdomain is down. In the future, we'll investigate running this page on a secondary DNS.

According to whois for namecheap.com, the DNS for that domain is hosted on dynect.net, and "host status.namecheap.com" resolves just fine (to 204.232.212.56), so it does not appear to be a DNS issue that is preventing your status page from working.

I stand corrected. It's on Rackspace, which apparently is also experiencing issues.

Re: DDOS on Namecheap Free DNS and Default DNS V2

#58
post #41

If your site is down and you are on v2, Switch to v1. It only takes a minute and it works.

I switched and it's the same, still down.

Well even if you switch to a different (working) nameserver, the old nameserver will still be cached all over the place so it will still appear down for many people.

Re: DDOS on Namecheap Free DNS and Default DNS V2

#59
post #15

We are in the process of mitigating a large scale DDoS attack against our global DNS platform. We expect service to return to normal very shortly. Stay tuned and let me know if you have any questions. ted@namecheap.com

Most DDOS attacks against a company like yours are actually attacks against a specific customer. If:

a) you had a pool of DNS server names, say 20, all with unrelated hostnames

b) you assigned 2 to each customer, randomly, when they configured a domain to use your servers.

Then, a DDOS attack would impact 10% of your customers instead of 100%. (Assuming other practices, like null routing the target until resolved)

Re: DDOS on Namecheap Free DNS and Default DNS V2

#60
post #15

We are in the process of mitigating a large scale DDoS attack against our global DNS platform. We expect service to return to normal very shortly. Stay tuned and let me know if you have any questions. ted@namecheap.com

Was going to switch to route 53 while you guys were down and switch back, but the page says it'll take a day...Might as well just wait at that point. I know it's panic mode over there, but some kind of failover record would be awesome for when this happens in the future(or an option for one).

Everything related to DNS says it'll take a day but that's "worst case"... I've successfully transferred DNS for 5 Namecheap-registered domains to Route 53 since this all started a couple hours ago, and they're now up & running smoothly.

Their "update DNS server" page was acting a bit wonky, kept saying some of my nameservers were invalid when they weren't, but I eventually got them all switched.

This isn't a dig against Namecheap, it sounds like this attack is pretty bad, but for important domains Route53 just seems like a much better setup (geographically dispersed, different nameservers for each hosted zone, etc).

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