Last week, the social media giant Facebook suffered some unnecessary downtime that they are now blaming on an error that occurred when a change was made to their DNS infrastructure.

“Earlier today we made a change to our DNS infrastructure and that change resulted in some people being temporarily unable to reach the site. We detected and resolved the issue quickly, and we are now back to 100 percent. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

DNS is the core or backbone of the Internet, without it, the Internet would be a much different place; harder to navigate and browse. We talk all the time about how much downtime caused by mother nature, traffic overloads, and other issues can cost your website, but what about user error?

What can you do to safeguard your website against unnecessary downtime due to user error? Simple, out into practice this 5 tips for DNS management.

1. Only allow authorized and knowledgeable people access to DNS accounts
2. Triple check any updates and changes
3. Monitor your DNS. Make sure it is always running and that it is resolving to the proper address. We suggest using Nagios or Pingdom.
4. Don’t let your domain name expire on accident. Register it for a few years at a time, or let it auto-renew.
5. Make sure your DNS Servers are patched and if available, updated to their latest version to avoid vulnerabilities

Who manages your websites DNS? Have you ever had downtime due to errors in DNS updates? What do you do to safeguard your website against downtime?

Are you thinking of launching a new product, service, or have an awesome idea for a new invention or product? Don’t forget the most important part of the process: registering the domain. If you forget, it could cost you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars down the road.

Also, are you thinking of a name for your new product, service, idea? Don’t forget to see if the name is already a registered domain. Although it may be okay if you have to choose another TLD if the .com version isn’t available, it may confuse your customers, in the long run, costing you unnecessary time and money.

Check out this other helpful posts:

6 Tips for Choosing the Right Domain Name
Best Practices: The Top 4 Ways to Protect your Domain Name

Today, the House of Representatives voted unanimously for the Internet to “remain free from government control.”

“Whereas given the importance of the Internet to the global
economy, it is essential that the Internet remain stable,
secure, and free from government control;”

This is quite exciting news, especially since we have seen so many controversial Internet bills pass through the House this past year. This may just be a small step for the Internet, but hopefully, it paves a way for the future in keeping the Internet free of control. You can read the entire Resolution here. What are your thoughts on this Resolution? Are you surprised to see that it was voted for unanimously? I sure was.

Did you know that the text message turned 20 years old today? On December 3, 1992, the first SMS message was sent! I am not quite sure what I would do without it!

According to Gizmodo, “in 2010 alone, the world sent over 6.1 trillion messages, or roughly 193,000 per second.”

The following 5 people are the winners of our giveaway. Please email ngoguen-text@no-ip.com. Please include your t-shirt size, mailing address, and No-IP username. Congrats!

1. Alex Copland
2. Jonathan Nahlke
3. Luca Viviani
4. Wade Thomas
5. Roger Huegi