New smart DNS (beta test)

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597 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1107406 13-Aug-2014 01:10

albi90:
charsleysa: I've been using this service for quite a while and I'll definitely be paying for it once it goes public (as long as the prices aren't too high).

There are a couple of nagging tidbits though:
1) the website doesn't have persistent sessions so I have to keep logging in again and again every time I go to update my ip address.
2) this is more of a feature request, can you make it so we can select a zone that auto updates so that when the ip address changes instead of displaying that unknown ip address page it will auto update the selected zone. I do expect people to be logged in for this to work (hence the first request above).

I think those features would be quite useful to someone who only uses one zone on a regular basis (e.g at home) and uses the other zones for when they travel, go to a friends house, etc. They are quite easy to implement and would take away so much hassle for me so I can get straight to watching movies on my devices (as some devices don't have physical keyboards so it's a pain to log in and update ip address).

Hi charsleysa

Thanks for the Feedback, the site does have persistent sessions but the session timeout is probably a bit low, I think we can pretty easily fix this.
As for the IP zone auto update, this could be added, is there any reason you don't use a dynamic dns, just set the dynamic dns domain in the zone and you never have to update your zone again.

Thanks
Jason k

FYI the price will be under $3 AUD, and a big thanks to every one on geekzone that's been helping out.

I just think they will be good features to have as not everyone would want to set up a Dynamic DNS.
I'll try it with the MyFritz Dynamic DNS (which I had forgotten about until just now) and see how it goes.
Also, when I wrote persistent sessions I meant sessions that never time out, its handy since I only use a few main devices which are all secure.

$3 AUD is about $4-5 NZD so I'll definitely be paying for the service!

Cheers.

Regards
Stefan Andres Charsley

albi90

554 posts

Ultimate Geek

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dns4me

#1107407 13-Aug-2014 01:14

charsleysa:
I just think they will be good features to have as not everyone would want to set up a Dynamic DNS.
I'll try it with the MyFritz Dynamic DNS (which I had forgotten about until just now) and see how it goes.
Also, when I wrote persistent sessions I meant sessions that never time out, its handy since I only use a few main devices which are all secure.

$3 AUD is about $4-5 NZD so I'll definitely be paying for the service!

Cheers.

I have updated the site to have a never expiring sessions :)
In the next few days I should be able to add an auto zone update function, your right it seems like a good feature to have.

Thanks
Jason K

Stu

Hammered
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#1107409 13-Aug-2014 01:34

Looking good so far from comments here. Price looks palatable too!

People often mistake me for an adult because of my age.

Keep calm, and carry on posting.

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YJ

145 posts

Master Geek

#1107458 13-Aug-2014 09:10

DarkShadow: OK. When you add servers in the future, first interest for me would be Hong Kong and second interest would be for China.

albi90

554 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

dns4me

#1107921 13-Aug-2014 20:22

YJ:
DarkShadow: OK. When you add servers in the future, first interest for me would be Hong Kong and second interest would be for China.

+1

Hi YJ

We now have a Chinese server and have added tuduo and youku to the services list :)

Thanks
Jason K

PhantomNVD

2619 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1107951 13-Aug-2014 20:56

albi90:
YJ:
DarkShadow: OK. When you add servers in the future, first interest for me would be Hong Kong and second interest would be for China.

+1

Hi YJ

We now have a Chinese server and have added tuduo and youku to the services list :)

Thanks
Jason K

with response times and customer involvement like this you're surely going to shine out from the crowd :)

thanks for the help in resolving the Lightboox issues, working great now and only bound by my own measly connection speeds (and their seeming lack of a decent buffer time)

sultanoswing

814 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1108566 14-Aug-2014 17:50

I've been using the service for a few days - and it has some absolutely outstanding features that are really useful to me and would be to many others:

1) The Host file generator is fantastic. I've put it in the /jffs/ partition of my tomato-based router (along with an adblocking hostfile from here: http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm). As a result, I am using my ISPs own DNS servers, which seems to have sped up my general web surfing, whilst having router-level adblocking and geo-unblocking. This is fantastic. The instructions to do this are here: http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2008/tomato-reverse-dns/

2) The DDNS (Dynamic DNS - not to be confused with DynDNS, a specific DDNS provider) feature is very easy to use and seems to be the best / simplest implementation of this feature on the DNS spoof providers I've seen.

3) Allowing 3 zones. I haven't had the occasion to use this yet, but it's very courteous and potentially advantageous.

4) The proposed price is very competitive

5) The management seems very friendly & responsive to suggestions, corrections and requests

As a result I'll be continuing to use this service & recommend it to others. Keep up the good work Jason!!

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quebec

852 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1108593 14-Aug-2014 18:28

Can I please try it, username name can be same as my GZ username. Thanks

sultanoswing

814 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1108705 14-Aug-2014 21:38

quebec: Can I please try it, username name can be same as my GZ username. Thanks

Just go to the homepage (www.dns4me.net) and sign up - at least that's what I did.

Jason - how often, in your experience, do the details in the hosts file change? I'm just wondering how often I'll be scp-ing an updated hosts file onto my router.

albi90

554 posts

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dns4me

#1108722 14-Aug-2014 22:43

sultanoswing:
quebec: Can I please try it, username name can be same as my GZ username. Thanks

Just go to the homepage (www.dns4me.net) and sign up - at least that's what I did.

Jason - how often, in your experience, do the details in the hosts file change? I'm just wondering how often I'll be scp-ing an updated hosts file onto my router.

Hi sultanoswing

The services will only change when we need to amended a service after they change a domain (a few days ago HBO and Hulu made some changes), or if we add a service. You will also need to amend the host file if you use the custom domain system or you enable a service.

In general the services don't don't change very often, if they do we will make a post on or facebook page.

Thanks
Jason k

Eitsop

583 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#1108723 14-Aug-2014 22:49

What are the pros & cons of dns4me vs VPN?

albi90

554 posts

Ultimate Geek

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dns4me

#1108751 15-Aug-2014 00:04

attewell: What are the pros & cons of dns4me vs VPN?

Hi attewell

Pros for any smart dns system over VPN
1) not all your traffic runs to a single server
2) you can appear to come from multiple countries at the same time
3) works on any device that you can change the DNS
4) only specific domains are redirected
5) alot faster as there is no encrypted tunnel overhead

Cons
1) no encryption
2) They require a lot of public IP addresses, every HTTPs domain needs to have its own public IPv4 address so the proxy can identify the destination of the encrypted packet.

This is how a smart dns works
A) your computer makes a request to the DNS server to find the IP of say google.com
B) the smart DNS says hay i know that domain and im supposed to send it here so it returns an address other than googles real ip address.
D) your computer sends a web-request to the new ip address (which is actually a proxy server in say the USA)
E) the server in the USA grabs the request and passes it on to the correct server (googles server)
F) googles server now sees the server in the USA as the source of the request making it think you are in the USA.

This is how a VPN works
A) An encrypted tunnel is created between you and the server.
B) All or part of your data is routed through the tunnel to the server giving you the appearance of being where the server is

VPNs are great if you looking for a secure tunnel, but for serving up media content they will always be slower due to the overhead, and you can only be in one country at a time.

Now for the pros and cons of dns4me vs other smart dns services.

Pros
1) Each user on our domain servers has there own settings, giving us greater customisability than any other provider.
2) We allow you to use upto 3 locations on the same account (i haven't seen any other providers do this)
3) We openly give you the ability to generate host files (every other provider is very secretive about this, i cant understand why as a customer you should be able to know what web requests are being redirected plus its super handy for the more geeky tech heads)
4) Custom domain overrides, because you have your own settings on the dns servers we can override custom domains to any of our servers, if we don't support a site or service you can add it as a custom domain and override it yourself.
5) The dns logger, by default we don't do any logging on dns requests but as a user you can open the dns logger enable logging and see what domains your apps are using (you can then override them to one of our servers right from the logger), for your security and to reduce the load on our servers the logs only stay in the system for 3hrs, this is a really handy tool for working out what domains to override on systems that are hard to trace like iPads/PS3/4
6) Easy to use interface, and we want your input to make it the best system around.
7) Home grown, I'm from NZ (born in Napier), Currently Australia based.

For the cons
1) we are new, there are some really great players in the market.
2) were a small team.
3) we support a lot of channels but not as many as the big players, we aim to increase this a lot but want to get the basics right first (great interface and stable infrastructure)

Hope that explains a few of the differences.

Thanks
Jason K

PhantomNVD

2619 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1108772 15-Aug-2014 07:03

Very well written and detailed explanation, thanks!
This will make it easier to convince friends too :)

gjm

808 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1108782 15-Aug-2014 08:05

signed up and will have a look. First impression is website looks very professional and well done. If I can get BBC iPlayer working then the wife will be very happy :)

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albi90

554 posts

Ultimate Geek

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dns4me

#1109460 16-Aug-2014 12:56

charsleysa:
albi90:
charsleysa: I've been using this service for quite a while and I'll definitely be paying for it once it goes public (as long as the prices aren't too high).

There are a couple of nagging tidbits though:
1) the website doesn't have persistent sessions so I have to keep logging in again and again every time I go to update my ip address.
2) this is more of a feature request, can you make it so we can select a zone that auto updates so that when the ip address changes instead of displaying that unknown ip address page it will auto update the selected zone. I do expect people to be logged in for this to work (hence the first request above).

I think those features would be quite useful to someone who only uses one zone on a regular basis (e.g at home) and uses the other zones for when they travel, go to a friends house, etc. They are quite easy to implement and would take away so much hassle for me so I can get straight to watching movies on my devices (as some devices don't have physical keyboards so it's a pain to log in and update ip address).

Hi charsleysa

Thanks for the Feedback, the site does have persistent sessions but the session timeout is probably a bit low, I think we can pretty easily fix this.
As for the IP zone auto update, this could be added, is there any reason you don't use a dynamic dns, just set the dynamic dns domain in the zone and you never have to update your zone again.

Thanks
Jason k

FYI the price will be under $3 AUD, and a big thanks to every one on geekzone that's been helping out.

I just think they will be good features to have as not everyone would want to set up a Dynamic DNS.
I'll try it with the MyFritz Dynamic DNS (which I had forgotten about until just now) and see how it goes.
Also, when I wrote persistent sessions I meant sessions that never time out, its handy since I only use a few main devices which are all secure.

$3 AUD is about $4-5 NZD so I'll definitely be paying for the service!

Cheers.

Hi charsleysa

The auto updating zone feature has been added, you can also generate a update URL to.
you can get to it by going to User Console > IP Access Zones
beside the blue "Use current IP" button there is a drop down, if you enable auto update the zone will show as green.

Enjoy :)

Thanks
Jason K

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