Options, Can Ya Dig it?

May 16, 2011·
by Natalie Goguen·

There are so many things that you can use Dig for! We are going to show you some of the options you can use to make your queries a little easier to digest.

+short
Pretty self-explanatory, by adding this to the end of a query, you will only receive the information that you asked for in your answer. So, if you want to know just the MX records of a domain, type the following query into your terminal

dig no-ip.com MX +short

or the NS records
dig no-ip.com NS +short

or just the IP address
dig no-ip.com +short

or the text records
dig no-ip.com TXT +short

+noall +answer or +noall +authority

+noall +answer or +noall +authority will help you get the answers you want, without making your answer as short as +short. You can use +noall +answer or +noall +authority
dig no-ip.com MX +noall +answer
or
dig no-ip.com MX +noall +authority
or dig no-ip.com (whatever record you are looking for) +noall +answer / +noall +authority

+trace
+trace lists all of the servers the request goes to/through in order to get an answer. Without it, you will just get the answer.
dig google.com +trace

+nssearch
+nssearch will list all of the SOA (start of authority) records of a domain
dig google.com +nssearch

Want to know all of the options?

dig -h will give you the complete list!

Questions or comments? Leave them below!

Want Email Without the Headache of Managing Your Own Mail Server?

April 14, 2011·
by Natalie Goguen·

Managing a mail server isn’t for everyone and if you, like myself, are not so technically inclined, then you should definitely consider our POP3/IMAP service. No-IP’s POP3/IMAP mail service gives you complete email service for your domain, without the headaches or the technical experience that is needed to run your own mail server.

The following are the pros of choosing our POP3/IMAP mail service versus running your own mail server:

1. Control email for your own domain without the cost or hassle of running your own server

2. No need to hire an internal resource to manage your server, with our POP3/IMAP service, all of the technical stuff is handled by us!

3. Travel a lot or work from home? With POP3/IMAP you can access your email anytime and anywhere with webmail!

4. RBL (Realtime Blackhole List) and virus scanning help avoid spam (no not the “meat” in a can) and junk mail

5. Secure back-up capabilities to ensure that none of your emails ever get lost

6. Full control and access to your account to allocate and control memory usage and add/remove users

So, what are you waiting for? Sign Up for our POP3/IMAP service today. No-IP POP3/IMAP offers tiered accounts for every need, large and small! Questions or comments? Leave them below!

Dig Tutorial

April 12, 2011·
by Natalie Goguen·

First and foremost, what the heck is Dig? Dig is an acronym for “domain internet groper”. Dig is a useful tool for webmasters and system administrators, it can be used to query DNS servers and fix DNS related issues. Dig is a part of the BIND DNS software.

There are many beneficial and useful ways to use dig. Do you ever find yourself needing to make changes to DNS records, but aren’t sure how to verify your changes?

Check out the following breakdown of a dig query.

Type the following dig query into your Terminal and follow along!

dig www.no-ip.com

This query will call on the A record for the domain name www.no-ip.com.

So, lets dive into this a little deeper and explain what each part of the response means…

The first two lines tell us the version of dig that is being used, in my case, i am using version 9.4.3-P3, the command line parameters (www.no-ip.com) and the query options (printcmd). The printcmd options means that the command section (the name of these first two lines) is printed. You can disable this response by using the option +nocmd.

; <<>> DiG 9.4.3-P3 <<>> www.no-ip.com ;; global options: printcmd

Next, dig tells you the response that it collected from the DNS server. The answer received was (opcode: QUERY) and that the response contains 1 part in the answer section, 5 parts in the authority section and 6 parts in the additional section. Just before those responses you will see “flags”. Flags state certain things about the DNS server and its response.

-qr (query response) simply means this is a response to a query
-rd (recursion desired) means that the incoming query requested recursive support
-ra (recursion available) means that the responding server supports recursive queries

;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 55423 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 5, ADDITIONAL: 6

The question section is next. This section just states what I queried, in this case, I queried the A record of www.no-ip.com and it is in the Internet class or IN.

;; QUESTION SECTION: ;www.no-ip.com. IN A

The answer section follows; it adds the IP address of www.no-ip.com, and it also names all of the NS records that are authoritative for the domain.

;; ANSWER SECTION: www.no-ip.com. 60 IN A 204.16.252.112 ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: no-ip.com. 50531 IN NS ns2.no-ip.com. no-ip.com. 50531 IN NS ns4.no-ip.com. no-ip.com. 50531 IN NS ns5.no-ip.com. no-ip.com. 50531 IN NS ns3.no-ip.com. no-ip.com. 50531 IN NS ns1.no-ip.com.
The additional section lists the IP addresses of all of the NS records, along with what type of record they are.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION: ns1.no-ip.com. 7702 IN A 204.16.255.55 ns1.no-ip.com. 128 IN AAAA 2620:0:2e60::33 ns4.no-ip.com. 128 IN A 75.102.60.46 ns2.no-ip.com. 79306 IN A 204.16.254.6 ns5.no-ip.com. 79306 IN A 75.102.59.82 ns3.no-ip.com. 19260 IN A 204.16.253.33
The last section just gives stats about the query: how long it took, the IP address it was queried from and how large the message was. You can disable this reply by using the +nostats option.

;; Query time: 48 msec ;; SERVER: 192.168.1.1#53(192.168.1.1) ;; WHEN: Fri Apr 8 11:22:02 2011 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 245

Using dig can help you troubleshoot your DNS related issues. How often do you use dig?

The Anatomy of a DNS Zone File – Part Two: What are NS Records and Why Are They Important to DNS?

April 8, 2011·
by Natalie Goguen·

An NS record or (name server record) tells recursive name servers which name servers are authoritative for a zone. Recursive name servers look at the NS records to work out who to ask next when resolving a name. You can have as many NS records as you would like in your zone file. The

Why Reliable DNS is Important To Your Business

March 23, 2011·
by Natalie Goguen·

Imagine, it’s 8:05am on a Monday morning. You log in to your computer and open up your email client, you read through a couple of emails that you received over the weekend and then you decide to reply to one of them, you hit send and…. NOTHING. The email won’t go out! You frantically pick up your phone and dial your IT department.

Across the country, a potential client who found your web URL on your Facebook page or some other type of advertisement wants to visit your site and see what you have to offer. They try to type your web URL into their web browser, and…. NOTHING. So, they do a quick Google search and find one of your competitors. Your competitor’s site is working fine, so they spend their money on that site.

Do these scenarios sound like something you don’t ever want to happen? Well, you better make sure that you have reliable DNS.

DNS is essential for many reasons. When a customer wants to visit your website, they type your Fully Qualified Domain Name, www.yourbusiness.com, into their web browser. Without DNS, your customers would have to remember the specific IP address (i.e. XX.XX.XX.XX) that your website is listed at. This could be very difficult, especially if your website has more than one IP address that points to that specific URL. IP addresses can vary across the globe. The DNS does all the work by redirecting the users to the correct web address, and making sure they are reaching the site that is hosted nearest to them, thereby ensuring that your customers are connected to your site the fastest way they can be and that traffic is balanced across all of the servers.

The location of DNS servers is important in ensuring 100% uptime. We deploy name servers across the globe at geographically unique datacenters using different tier 1 bandwidth providers to ensure a natural disaster or connectivity outage does not disrupt our robust DNS network.

DNS helps direct your emails to the proper servers, redirect customers to the proper domain and ensures that they reach your site the fastest and best way that they can at all times, even if mother nature decides to rear her ugly head.

How has having reliable DNS helped you in the past?