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epik How come Epik only allow 5 Nameservers?

This is a discussion about the domain name registrar/company Epik.

accurate

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Epik only allows you to set 5 Nameservers in the UI and Dashboard. Why is this?

If I have more I need to request this via support which is annoying.

Most registrars allow you to set a lot more. So I've never had this issue before. 🤷🏽‍♂️

@dadan @robmonster @akirlew
 
Domain summit 2024

aleksey.k

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Why would you need so many though? Some sort of load balancing between NSes?
 
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Neoget

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What's the benefit of adding more than two, can you list same domain across many marketplaces or this is for something else?
 

accurate

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What's the benefit of adding more than two, can you list same domain across many marketplaces or this is for something else?
I use DNSMadeEasy and they have more nameservers.
 

amplify

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I use DNSMadeEasy and they have more nameservers.
In an off-topic note, Rob showed me that Epik's DNS can perform as good or better than DNSMadeEasy which is now saving me $20/month. I would probably use Route 53 if I had more requests or at least A/B them though. My traffic isn't high enough to care (1,000,000+/mo) and other sites are Shopify, etc., hosted so no worries about them.

But I believe I only ever used 2 or 4 of their nameservers when I did...

On a side note, it looks like Google uses 4 while DNSMadeEasy uses 6 nameservers. So, should be able to set 6, but I don't know what the benefit of an extra 1 would be.
 

accurate

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I've been using DNSMadeEasy for several of my websites for several years. It is much better compared to any other DNS I've ever used.

In an off-topic note, Rob showed me that Epik's DNS can perform as good or better than DNSMadeEasy which is now saving me $20/month. I would probably use Route 53 if I had more requests or at least A/B them though. My traffic isn't high enough to care (1,000,000+/mo) and other sites are Shopify, etc., hosted so no worries about them.

But I believe I only ever used 2 or 4 of their nameservers when I did...

On a side note, it looks like Google uses 4 while DNSMadeEasy uses 6 nameservers. So, should be able to set 6, but I don't know what the benefit of an extra 1 would be.

FYI looks like @Epik solved this issue. You can now add a lot more nameservers if you need too.
 

amplify

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I've been using DNSMadeEasy for several of my websites for several years. It is much better compared to any other DNS I've ever used.
Probably best for mission-critical sites as you stated in the other thread so that the possibility of all of them going down at once isn't the case. I would be interested in knowing if Epik has all of this infrastructure in place themselves or if they're leasing it from someone like DNSMadeEasy or another managed DNS provider in the game. They have quite a few locations for it to just be Epik, I would think...
 

accurate

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Probably best for mission-critical sites as you stated in the other thread so that the possibility of all of them going down at once isn't the case.

Yes I assume that's why they have so many IPs.

I would be interested in knowing if Epik has all of this infrastructure in place themselves or if they're leasing it from someone like DNSMadeEasy or another managed DNS provider in the game. They have quite a few locations for it to just be Epik, I would think...

I'm sure they rent out some DNS.
 

mr-x

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What's the benefit of adding more than two, can you list same domain across many marketplaces or this is for something else?

Queries are routed the to closest DNS providing faster domain resolution.
 

ncabete

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Queries are routed the to closest DNS providing faster domain resolution.
I wanted to step in here and say that as much as I'd like to agree (it would make things way easier!), that is not how it works.

When you attempt to resolve a domain, your DNS resolver (by default, your ISP) will:
0. Check local cache and return result if present (hence, DNS takes time to propagate)
1. Query the root servers (e.g: a.root-servers.net), and the root servers will instruct the resolver to contact the TLD servers
2. Query the TLD servers (e.g: a.gtld-servers.net) and the TLD servers will instruct the resolver to contact the nameservers of the domain in question
3. Query the nameservers

When I first learned this process, I thought that the resolver would query the Nameservers in the order they were set, however it is done randomly (which, some would argue, is nice of them, given that they avoid hammering all DNS servers of the domain in question, and it sort-of acts as a load balancer by not always querying the first listed nameserver). I have 2 glue nameservers for a personal website, I host the 2 nameservers on a personal server and if I trace my DNS Requests, they're sometimes answered by the 1st NS and sometimes answered by the 2nd NS, even though they are physically located in the same place.

There is a technology called Anycast which "runs" on the network level (BGP) and despite multiple usages, it is commonly used for DNS, simply put, Anycast is essentially a server cluster ("ton of servers") that "share" the same IP address, but when you start a connection to a (name)server that runs on Anycast, the geographically closest server will be the one to reply because BGP will route you to the closest one.

At Epik, our DNS runs on Anycast, if you run a ping test from multiple locations to ns4.epik.com you will see that despite great physical distance between locations, the pings are relatively small from all of them:
1638733001040.png
The most notorious example here is USA, New Jersey showing an RTT of 1.2ms and Germany which is on another continent, showing an RTT of 0.9.

If Anycast wasn't used and instead we offered 2 nameservers, one physically located in the USA and the other in the EU, visitors from EU would still be querying the USA server and likewise, which would result in higher response times.

Hope this sheds in some light!
 

Neoget

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What happens if I add 2 NS from Sedo, 2 NS from Epik, 2 NS from Dan to single domain name?
Can this work to add the same domain to different markets to get more exposure or it will cause some conflict?
I came to conclusion that end users are not aware of great names, that is why most of times they will not input the domain directly in the web address, instead they will visit a marketplace and look for great names for their website, that is why better to list same domains at all available marketplaces, to get maximum exposure, problem is that you must verify the domains belong to you, wonder if this trick can work at least for verification purposes.
 

ncabete

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What happens if I add 2 NS from Sedo, 2 NS from Epik, 2 NS from Dan to single domain name?
Can this work to add the same domain to different markets to get more exposure or it will cause some conflict?
I came to conclusion that end users are not aware of great names, that is why most of times they will not input the domain directly in the web address, instead they will visit a marketplace and look for great names for their website, that is why better to list same domains at all available marketplaces, to get maximum exposure, problem is that you must verify the domains belong to you, wonder if this trick can work at least for verification purposes.
In terms of verification purposes I am not entirely sure how the other venues do it, but I assume if it's done through TXT Record you can simply add a fixed set of NS (e.g. Epik's), add the required TXT Records to verify the domain ownership, and then use whatever nameservers you want because the domain has already been verified.

Now, when it comes to your question of using 3 different sets of NS, what would happen is that visitors would see a different page depending on what nameserver replies to the DNS Request. Theoretically, you could even end up with a scenario where you open the domain in your browser and see Epik's Landing Page, then you refresh it and you see Sedo's landing page.

I would say that a better route to take is to add the domains to all marketplaces, but pick just one vendor to park your domains with.
 

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