If you register a domain with Cloudflare or Route 53, and that service goes down, do your records stay active in the DNS servers? What if the DNS servers go down, I know a lot of people use 8.8.8.8, so if Google’s server goes down, then DNS fails?

What are the potential point of failures for having your own domain?

  • terribleplan@lemmy.nrd.liEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    If the registrar goes down that means you will not be able to change your NS and glue records with the TLD (com.).

    If you are also using your registrar’s authoritaive DNS servers and those are down, it means your website will likely be entirely unreachable regardless of what recursive DNS servers someone is using. If you are using someone else’s authoritative DNS servers (such as Cloudflare, Route53, Dyn, Google Cloud, etc.) your registrar going down would not cause immediate problems.

    If Google recursive DNS servers go down, it means anyone using those servers will be unable to find any website they wish to visit, including yours. Basically as far as most normal users would be able to tell their internet just stops working. There are many popular options for public recursive DNS including Google (8.8.8.8), Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), Quad9 (9.9.9.9), OpenDNS, AdGuard, and more. Not all recursive DNS operators host authoritative servers, and if they do the infrastructure for the two services are often different because they have different uses and needs.

    Google’s 8.8.8.8 servers are recursive, they do not host the data, they only look it up and cache it. The recursive servers talk to the authoritative servers. This is what a recursive DNS server does when you try to visit example.com. assuming it doesn’t have any of this data cached:

    1. Figures out where com.'s DNS servers are by querying the special root zone (.) DNS servers (that are expected to be known by all recursive DNS servers and change incredibly infrequently) for the NS records for com.. The root zone DNS servers may also respond with “glue” records indicating the IP addresses of the com. DNS servers.
    2. Figures out where example.com.'s DNS servers are by querying the DNS servers found in step 1 for the NS records for example.com.. The com.'s DNS servers may also respond with “glue” records indicating the IP addresses of the example.com. DNS servers.
    3. Figures out what IP address(es) host example.com. by querying the DNS servers found in step 2 for the A and/or AAAA records for example.com.