Is this really free? Will it become a paid service later?

It is really free. ns-global has been running as a free service for more than ten years, and we have no plans to change that. The service is being run on donated address space with donated servers, so for us to come back and try and charge for anything would be pretty poor form.

That being said, since this is free we can’t really support huge or abusive users, so if you host thousands of zones, we’re probably not the service you’re looking for unless you’re willing to contribute a significant amount of support to ns-global.

I want to change the list of IP addresses ns-global AXFRs from. How do I do that?

Just resubmit your add request on the sign up form with the new complete list of addresses you would like us to pull from. Our system will replace the existing list with the new list every time you submit a request.

Can I delete my zone later?

Yes. If you decide that you don’t want to use ns-global.kjsl.com, you can submit the zone with “0” as the IP address to pull from, and we’ll send you a confirmation link to delete the zone.

Do you support DNSSEC?

Yep! All of the anycaster nodes are running BIND 9.16, so we support standard DNSSEC. We do not support white lies or DNSSEC shotgun, so if you’re not signing a regular static zone file, we’re not the service for you.

What does it mean that NS-Global is anycast?

Anycast means that our ns-global.kjsl.com servers are distributed world wide, and are all configured identically to answer questions sent to the same IP addresses. Every site uses the BGP routing protocol to announce the same IP addresses, and the rest of the Internet can select the closest site and route DNS queries there, which is faster than every query needing to travel back to California where the NS-Global management system is. It means we’re able to literally beat the speed of light relative to a single DNS server, and that matters quite a bit for DNS.

This also means that if a single site goes offline, or the DNS server starts having issues, the ns-global system can withdraw that announcement to drain the site and the rest of the Internet will stop sending queries to that site and pick the next best site in a matter of seconds.

Where are the NS-Global DNS servers?

Our list of Points of Presence is always expanding, but the current list is:

  • Fremont, California, USA
  • Santa Clara, California, USA
  • Tucson, Arizon, USA
  • New York City, New York, USA
  • Reston, Virginia, USA
  • Bettendorf, Iowa, USA
  • Frankfurt, Germany
  • Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • Sao Paulo, Brazil
  • Bogota, Colombia
  • Johannesburg, South Africa
  • Sydney, Australia
  • Auckland, New Zealand
  • Toronto, Canada
  • Tokyo, Japan
  • Dronten, Netherlands

If you would like to know which of our sites you’re hitting, send a CHAOS TXT query for the host “id.server” and our anycast nodes will respond with their unicast hostname:

  • dig chaos txt id.server @ns-global.kjsl.com. +short

We also have RIPE Atlas measurements running against the full constellation for IPv4 and IPv6.

Can I give you a VM to add to the anycast network?

Possibly! The difficult thing about anycast is that many times adding a new site does more harm than good for performance, but if you’re able to spin us up a free VM with a BGP session, our exact specificiations are listed on our PeeringDB page. If you’re still interested, Email us and we can talk about if your location makes sense in the scope of NS-Global.

Will NS-Global be offering more than one NS address in the future?

No. ns-global.kjsl.com is a single NS address, and you should use us as just one of your secondary NS servers in your zone. We would recommend that you use a few other DNS services as well so you can have multiple orthogonal DNS servers and don’t entirely rely on us.