DNS Management, Domain Name Services FAQ - astrodawg.com web hosting

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	Frequently Asked Questions - DNS Services astrodawg.com: What services does astrodawg.com provide? How do I get started? What nameservers do I use? What are astrodawg.com's policies? What are astrodawg.com's terms of service? How can I contact astrodawg.com? How reliable are astrodawg.com's servers? How does your billing system work? Is your service free? How much are your services? Are there any limits to what you provide? I lost my password! Can I get it sent to me? I want to link to you. Do you have any link images? General Questions: What is DNS? Where can I learn more about DNS? How can I host multiple web sites on one IP address? Domain Management: What can I control via the Domain Manager? What is an "A" record? What is an "MX" record? What is a "CNAME" record? What is a WebForward? What is Cloaking? What is a MailForward? How do I create a default MailForward for my domain? How do I MailForward the same mailbox to multiple recipients? Does astrodawg.com support round-robin DNS? How do I enable secondary, backup or slave DNS service? How can I delete a zone? How can I delete my account? Why can't I have the same domain name in multiple record types? Why can't I delete the "A" record for the root name of my domain? How many records can I create for my domain name? How does your failover service work? What services does astrodawg.com provide? astrodawg.com hosts reliable DNS servers, e-mail servers for email forwarding, and web servers for URL forwarding and parked domains. astrodawg.com provides a convenient single-location, integrated, web-based domain manager for configuring all of the services provided. How do I get started? What nameservers do I use? Here's a simple step by step set of instructions on how to get started: - you must buy or already own a domain name from a registrar - sign up for the service using complete information - you will get your password via email - log in to your account and click "add zones" - enter the domain name that you want DNS services for and click "add" - a pair of nameservers will be assigned to you - contact your registrar and tell them to change the nameservers for your domain - wait 3 days for the change to take place What are astrodawg.com's policies? Check out our policies page. What are astrodawg.com's terms of service?? Check out our terms page. How can I contact astrodawg.com? Check out our contact page. How reliable are astrodawg.com's servers? astrodawg.com DNS service has never experienced a DNS outage in its history. Even still, we are planning improvements to our network that should make astrodawg.com the most robust DNS provider on the Internet. We run monitoring scripts on all of our servers, tracking CPU utilization, traffic, and response time. In the event of an outage, the DNS system automatically fails over to another network - without losing a single query. How does your billing system work? Here's how the billing cycle works: When you make a purchase - we add 'zone credits' to your account When a domain is added to the system, your account is debited by 1 and the start date is set on the domain Just like when you buy a domain name, this debit is permanent unless you delete it within a few days. Every time 1 year or 200MB of usage is used (1 million DNS queries), 1 debit is added to your account for the zone When the number of debits exceeds the number of credits in your account, we will send a reminder notice to the billing contact listed on your account. After 30 days we will send several warning messages to both contacts listed. We will never turn off an account until 30 days have passed after we have sent warning messages How much are your services? Are there any limits to what you provide? The pricing structure is: $10.95 - 1 zone credit $79.95 - 10 zone credits $149.95 - 25 zone credits $449.95 - 100 zone credits * You only get debited when you add a zone to the system. Unused credits never expire. Usage that counts towards your quota includes bytes transferred during DNS queries, delivery of parked home pages, delivery of URL forwarding information, and delivery of forwarded e-mails. If you do not use WebPark, WebForward and MailForward, then only DNS queries will count towards your total usage. For example if a single domain goes over 200 MB of transfer during a year, then it counts as TWO domains, if it goes over 400MB, then it counts as three, etc. Usually DNS hits are cached, so even the busiest sites won't go over the 200 MB limit. 200 MB should get you about 1,000,000 DNS queries. A typical site uses 5 MB per year of DNS bandwidth. There is no limit to the number of subdomains or records that your zone may contain. If you go over your credit limits, we will send a billing notice. Free users can always cancel their account without obligation after receiving a billing notice. I lost my password! Can I get it sent to me? In addition to your email address, you have to remember either a) Your Name or b) One of the domains your are editing. Send us a request and we will return your password as soon as possible. I want to link to you. Do you have any link images? We appreciate text links just as much, but if you want, you can use the images here. What is DNS? DNS is the technology that ties text-based domain names to the numeric IP Addresses that are necessary to locate the domain's server on the net. Click here to view a simplified picture of how DNS works. Where can I learn more about DNS? Click here to view a simplified flowchart of how DNS works. The DNS Resources Directory is an excellent place to start, containing a good list of DNS information. ISC BIND is the standard in DNS server software and is distributed for free at isc.org. O'Reilly publishes DNS and Bind, an excellent book, and the industry standard manual for understanding and using DNS. How can I host multiple web sites on one IP Address? You can set up as many domains as you want pointing to the same IP Address using DNS, just keep adding zones, and setting the IP addresses. However, you need a web server that uses the 'host' header to route the different domains to different web instances. Apache Info: Using name-based Virtual Hosts Microsoft IIS Info: Using Host Header Names in IIS What can I control via the Domain Manager? If you have an ISP that will serve your domain, you can assign "A" records so that visitors to your web site will connect to the web server that your ISP has assigned to you, and "MX" records so people who send you e-mail will connect to your ISP's mail server. If you aren't using an ISP for your domain, you can tell our servers to park your domain on the web with a "Coming Soon!" introductory web page. Also, you can redirect visitors at your domain's web page to any other web page of your choosing, using a WebForward. You can additionally create MailForwards that will allow you to receive any e-mail directed at your domain in the mailbox at your ISP, or any free mailbox, like hotmail, yahoo, etc. What is an "A" record? An "A" record, also called an "address" record, ties a domain name to an IP address. If there is a server on the Internet that is configured to handle traffic for this domain, you can enter the name of the domain (like "www.astrodawg.com") and the IP address of the server (like "209.81.71.236"), and almost immediately, anyone surfing to that domain connects to the correct server. What is an "MX" record? "MX" ("Mail eXchanger") records are used to specify what server on the Internet is running e-mail software that is configured to handle e-mail for your domain. If you want your ISP to handle routing the e-mail for your domain to you, you need to specify the domain name or IP address of your ISP's mail server. In addition, you can specify the rank of each mail server when you have more than one. Make sure your ISP knows that you're using their servers to route your domain's email, or all your e-mail will "return to sender"! If you want to use our servers instead of your ISP's, don't specify any "MX" records, just configure our simple MailForward service! What is a "CNAME" record? "CNAME" records, short for "Canonical Name", create an alias from a domain name to another. You could create an alias from "yahoo.mydomain.com" to "www.yahoo.com", and every reference to "yahoo.mydomain.com" would go to the other location, regardless how yahoo changed their IP addresses! Be careful, however; CNAMEs won't work everywhere. If you create an MX record, and the name used for the mail server was defined using a CNAME, you might lose e-mail! What is a WebForward? A WebForward creates a hidden "A" record pointing to our web server. When our web server gets a request for your site from a visitor, our web server is designed to forward the visitor to the URL of your choosing. What is Cloaking? Cloaking is a special kind of WebForward. Just like a WebForward, cloaking creates a hidden "A" record pointing to our web server. However, when our web server gets a request for your site from a visitor, not only does our web server forward the visitor to the URL of your choosing, but an invisible frame is used to hide the destination URL. Your domain name stays in the location bar of your visitor's browser, thus "cloaking" the destination URL. What is a MailForward? A MailForward creates a hidden "MX" record pointing to our email server. When we receive an email on your behalf, our email server is designed to forward the email to the address of your choosing. Expert tip: If you use "" for the new email address (or just leave it blank), then all email going to your domain will get sent to the destination address, if it doesn't match another email address you've explicitly specified. Also, specifying the same new email address twice with different destinations will cause a copy of the email to get sent to both destinations! How do I create a default MailForward for my domain?* If you use "" for the new email address (or just leave it blank), then all email going to your domain will get sent to the destination address, if it doesn't match another email address you've explicitly specified. How do I MailForward the same mailbox to multiple recipients?* Specifying the same new email address twice with different destinations will cause a copy of the email to get sent to both destinations. Does astrodawg.com support round-robin DNS? We sure do! Simply create 2 "A" records with the same domain name and different IP addresses, and your visitors will be load balanced between the two servers. How do I enable secondary, backup or slave DNS service? Our secondary DNS servers will pull DNS information from your primaries. In the Control Panel, on the View Page, click 'Advanced'. On that screen you should see a 'Make Slave Zone' link. Clicking on this link will disable the regular control panel, and will allow you to enter the IP address of the master server. How can I delete a zone? On the View page, click on "Advanced", and then click on "Permanently Delete this Zone". The zone is quickly removed from service on our nameservers. We refund usage for deleted domains within 24 hours, only if they are deleted within 30 days and the usage is below 20K, or if they have never been used. How can I delete my account? Simply remove all of the zones from your account. You account will then expire as 'unused', and you will receive a termination notice. If you are leaving us because of missing features or other issues, please let us know, so we can improve the site. We'd really appreciate it! Send a mail from our contact page. Why can't I have the same domain name in multiple record types? Because WebForward needs a special "A" record to function correctly. Also, CNAMEs are mutually exclusive of "A" records, since a domain name can't be both an IP address AND an alias simultaneously. Why can't I delete the "A" record for the root name of my domain? All domains must have an "A" record for the root of the domain. Believe it or not, omitting this "A" record may prevent some mail servers from delivering your email correctly. WebParking or WebForwarding the root of your domain is sufficient, because both of these create hidden "A" records pointing to our servers. If you're really looking to delete this record, try changing the IP address to "0.0.0.0" instead, it's functionally equivalent. How many records can I create for my domain name? As many as you want! How does your failover service work? Failover monitoring service works when you have two or more web servers running the same (or similar) web site. First, you need add more than one IP address for your domains, then you add the failover monitor. The failover monitor watches your web servers by hitting a URL you specify and looking for text in the results. When the system detects that one of them is having an error, it pulls the IP address out of the list. If none of the IP's are responding and you have a failure IP/URL defined, then it points the site to the failure IP/URL. If the system can't get to all of the IP's then it assumes that the fault is it's own connection - and it takes no action. This effectively and safely keeps your site online - even if one of your web servers is down.
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Frequently Asked Questions - DNS Services