I never paid much attention to DNS resolution settings (mainly in terms of resolution speed). Initially, I used the NS servers provided by the domain registrar, but I felt there were too many restrictions. So, for a long time, I used Namecheap’s free NS resolution service. Even after registering domains with GoDaddy, I maintained the same practice: the first thing I did after registering a domain was to change the NS to something like freedns.namecheap.com.
The basic function of NS is to inform end-users that the website they entered will be directed to an IP address. This involves the simplest association between an IP and a domain name on the internet, so I won’t elaborate further.
Understanding it this way, the process of accessing a website daily can be broken down into the following steps:
- Enter the URL http://ifosu.com in the browser.
- The local DNS server 202.192.168.38 (an internal DNS server on the campus network) receives the request to access the website and checks its cache.
- If there is no record in the server’s cache, the server will send the request to an international root DNS server. Any root server globally will have a record of the real NS server for ifosu.com, which is dns.dnspod.com, and will forward the request to dns.dnspod.com.
- When the request reaches the dns.dnspod.com server, it will query the local A record for ifosu.com, which is 208.89.212.251, thus returning the request to the 208.89.212.251 server.
- The 208.89.212.251 server receives the request and sends the webpage data to my computer, which is then rendered by my local browser.
From the above process, it’s clear that the speed of accessing a website is closely related to the NS server. If the NS server of the domain is too far from the local, it can easily slow down the website access speed. This website has been tested to take over a second, sometimes even 3-5 seconds, when using Namecheap’s NS servers. Now, after switching to DNSPod, the initial time should be negligible.
The reason I chose Namecheap at the time was mainly due to a lack of understanding of the domestic DNS environment. I often came across articles criticizing the poor security environment of domestic DNS, which led to a great deal of distrust. Although the situation remains the same, for the sake of website access speed, I have chosen to endure it.
DNSPod includes the following six types of resolution: A, CNAME, MX, AAAA, TXT, NS.
Namecheap, in addition to the above six, also offers: URL forwarding, URL 301 redirect, URL hidden forwarding.
DNSPod has restrictions on TTL, with free services not allowing less than 600 seconds, while Namecheap has no restrictions on TTL.
There are also other detailed differences, such as DNSPod providing multi-line resolution with Chinese characteristics, and Namecheap offering dynamic resolution and SRV records, among others.