IBM NS1 Connect Reviews

We use NS1 to serve our public DNS and we have around 500 domains that we service through it. It is the public resolver for our website and various other entities we own, and it has been pretty good.

The solution is hosted by NS1. 

We have done some DNS load balancing through NS1 and, using the Filter Chain offering, it has been very straightforward. That's what really sets them apart from their competitors. It's very simple to do and very powerful, reliable, and accurate.

In addition, we haven't had any issues at all with uptime when there is a DDoS attack. When we have been the subject of an attack, NS1 has been up and stable for us, as well as performant. On top of that, it has been able to provide us with pretty good details of what kinds of attacks we have been subject to and what NS1 was doing at the time. Even if we are undergoing DDoS attacks, NS1 will still serve DNS for us.

We have also seen an improvement in our DNS response times compared to previous vendors we used that had had some churn on their response times.

NS1 has also reduced DNS maintenance work for us. Being an e-commerce platform, every millisecond counts for a customer, and we definitely struggled there. We do a lot of testing and monitoring of response times and, in other solutions, we were seeing that our DNS responses would be flapping from time to time, meaning sometimes they'd be really fast and sometimes they'd be really slow. In a dashboard or graph view, you'd see spikes, a screen full of mountains, things going up and down, up and down. But NS1 gives us a nice flat line, because it's always performant and fast and that's what we want to see. Every millisecond we can shave off is better for business.

We have also saved time when it comes to manual processes because NS1 is API-first. That means we can automate records, as needed, as part of other processes. And from time to time, as part of troubleshooting, they have a nice feature where you can see if there is a record or multiple records that get an abnormal amount of queries against them. You can see that granularly, down to the actual record view. That is something you can't do on a lot of platforms. The insight we get is really good compared to other solutions.

Another benefit is connected to the fact that we have some FTP servers that partners of ours use to send and receive files. Those servers are fronting several backend servers, although the partner wouldn't know. They connect to one endpoint and, from their point of view, it's just one server, but it's actually several servers. With the other solutions we've had, if maintenance was needed on a backend server, the partner would notice that the server was down. With NS1's Filter Chains and health checks and monitoring all built-in, we can take servers like that out of service and the partner would never know because NS1 just routes them to a healthy server. That kind of stuff is extremely important for us.

• Ease of use 
• Stability - We haven't had any issues at all with the service.

Also, the fact that it's an API-first platform for DNS and application traffic management is one of the reasons we looked into NS1. We use it for a lot of automation and metrics gathering and it's been great.

Its real-time telemetry and ecosystem of integrations are very easy to use. We haven't taken advantage of much of that, but the fact that we know those capabilities are there, and that they're pretty straightforward, is key. We have done a few things using their routing protocols that are provided as part of the service and that has been really nice. We can actually do automation around that as needed.

I would like to see the UI updated to allow me to do finer searches. I would also like to have the ability to get reports that can sort based on various metrics. For example, I would like to be able to say, "Show me the top 10 records by total queries" in an easy-to-digest format. If I wanted to do that today, given that we have 500 domains, I'd have to go into every single domain and browse through it to see what is getting hit the most. That kind of filtering functionality would help because our licensing model is based on the number of queries we serve per month. If something goes hog-wild, I want to be able to easily find what that is and then react to it.

We have been using NS1 Managed DNS for about four years. 

If there are scalability issues, they haven't been apparent to us as a customer. As a system engineer, I can empathize and I'm sure they have some internally, but we haven't seen them. The scalability helps meet SLAs and customers’ demands, without adding complexity.

Every customer who hits our website is using NS1, so that is up to millions per day. Internally, it's mostly system engineers who use it to add or remove records and there are about a dozen of them, possibly more.

In terms of increasing use of NS1, we're looking into their internal DNS and DHCP solutions. That would be a complicated migration for us, and we are currently in multi-year agreements with other vendors. The goal would be to start slowly migrating over to NS1 for all of our DNS and DHCP needs, but that will take a few years.

We have a dedicated success manager. We don't need a lot from him, but every two or three months he checks in to see if we have any large needs. We also meet with him once every few months just to touch base.

Their technical support is really quick to respond to concerns. They communicate well and provide feedback that's not only technical but easy to understand if you're not technical. They do a great job.

Positive

We've used other tools like this over the years, obviously, being a publicly exposed e-commerce platform, and we've had some struggles with them. NS1 has been really smooth for us. Most recently we used Dyn DNS. They were purchased by Oracle and, predictably, their offering went downhill after that. Dyn was cumbersome, at best, to get the stats and reports that we needed, and to steer traffic as needed. With NS1, it has been extremely straightforward.

The clincher that made us switch to NS1, for me, was actually talking to their CEO at a conference in New York, in 2017. He gave a presentation on their ability to withstand large attacks. He is a systems engineer/architect/programmer at heart. He knew the tech side of the industry and that gave me the confidence I needed that he actually knew how to solve some of the problems that we were facing.

We then went through some stress tests with NS1 and it was much more performant than other vendors that we had done trials with.

The initial setup was straightforward. There wasn't a whole lot to it. I had to learn the semantics that are specific to the system, but once I did that it was really straightforward.

The deployment took a few phone calls and meetings with our onboarding team and engineers, to go over the scope. The work itself was really pretty straightforward and took just a couple days.

Our implementation strategy was to sync the main zones we care about, like our main ".com" domain, which is a big zone where a lot of our traffic comes. We added the NS1 name servers to that zone, in addition to the Dyn name servers. That meant a customer going to our website would get served through Dyn or NS1 or sometimes they'd bounce around. Once we saw that NS1 was receiving traffic, we let it bake for a couple of days and then we started removing the Dyn name servers, to the point where there was only NS1 left. There was no downtime when we migrated to NS1 from Dyn.

The solution's automation has saved our staff work. As I mentioned, we host about 500 domains and serve DNS publicly through NS1. We were doing a lot of that in-house on our own infrastructure and appliances, through Infoblox. The thought of migrating all of that to another platform was kind of harrowing. But with the NS1 API, it actually took us maybe four hours to do all the work. That kind of stuff is really helpful when you're an assistant engineer and you have multitasking upon multitasking happening. I was thinking that project would take two months, but it took one day to do.

We did not use a third-party.

Our ROI comes from the fact that it has been stable and we've had to spend less time on it than we did with third-party integrations and other solutions that we've purchased. It's more of a set-it-and-forget-it type of platform, which is extremely valuable.

NS1's pricing is much more aggressive than its competitors in the market and you get more value out of what you pay for it.

We went through trials with Dyn, of course, because we were their customer. We had also done some trials with Infoblox, which is another of our vendors, but that was where we were hosting the DNS ourselves and using their appliances. And we did some trials with Akamai, which is our CDN provider—the biggest one on the internet—and they have their own DNS offering.

But NS1 outperformed all of them in terms of the ability to administer it and the actual response times of queries and the propagation of DNS records out to the greater internet. It was much faster, generally speaking, in broadcasting those changes. A DNS has a TTL, a time to live. If you change a record or add a record, it can take up to a certain amount of time to propagate throughout the world, which makes sense because the world is one big connected internet. Akamai was taking a few hours to propagate and NS1 was taking just seconds or minutes to propagate. That was key for us. If we have to make changes because there's a routing issue or an internet issue somewhere in the world, we want to make sure that we can serve traffic. If we need to make some changes on our DNS, NS1 publishes them right away.

If someone says they don't need to spend money on a solution like this because they have a free cloud provider or basic DNS, I would say you get what you pay for and that you're also paying for the time and energy you have to put in, yourself, to do the work.

Perhaps one of the biggest wins for NS1 is that people don't readily know their name at times. That means they're doing a good job and people don't even think about who our DNS provider is because it just works.

I would say use NS1, without hesitation.

We use NS1 as the primary point of contact, the first point of contact for a client to reach us, to discover a DNS. We use NS1 in two ways: We use the Managed DNS product and the Dedicated DNS product, which gives us redundancy. Our primary use-case is for getting users to the CDN [content delivery network] one that is best suited for each user.

We have an automated deployment, so we use Terraform to deploy changes.

The managed solution is completely managed by NS1; it's not on-premises.

The integrations for monitoring events is helpful. Monitoring of events can change things in the Filter Chain. That helps our team receive alerts. Our team is kept in the loop about what is happening.

When it comes to maintaining uptime during a major DDoS attack, NS1 is very good. NS1's Dedicated DNS gives us redundancy. In addition, NS1 has worked closely with us to get us into the position we are in today. They do a good job in communicating problems and of looking forward with their solutions. They don't just address the current issue when it comes to DDoS and mitigation. These are continuous issues. It's not just a one-off that you handle once. They look for solutions that will solve future DDoS impact.

It has also improved our DNS response times. Because we have been using NS1 for quite a long time, it's hard to estimate how much response times have improved. But since we started with them we have definitely done better. The most critical thing that we look at, rather than the response time, is the time for propagation, and that's been very good.

The solution has also massively reduced DNS maintenance work in our company. The way we were set up a long time ago was that we would maintain things by ourselves, and now we don't do anything along those lines. For the external DNS, we do about 10 percent of the amount of work that we did previously. That's a huge improvement. The amount of maintenance has gone down significantly and our maintenance cost is down by at least 70 percent, for the external DNS.

NS1's automation has also enabled us to assign people to other kinds of work. It saves us time so that we can concentrate on other things.

Overall, it has helped to improve our end-user experience. Knowing the DNS delivery part is taken care of is important; performance is very critical. Taking users to the right CDN or data center is very important for the end-user experience. NS1 is part of the set of tools we have to achieve that better user experience and to get them to the right place.

The Filter Chain is one of the most valuable features, for geo-load balancing and geo-fencing. The Filter Chain is the most useful because it allows us to do several things. With geo-fencing we can redirect a particular user to a particular answer. That's very valuable for us. Filter Chains with monitoring is our strategy to provide redundancy.

We also use the automation extensively, with Terraform.

From the get-go, we have used the API from NS1. We have hardly used the solution's UI. For any major changes, we use the API and that works brilliantly for us. As an infrastructure team and organization, we heavily value infrastructure as code, so this is a great approach. Any feature that comes into the Filter Chain gets exposed first to the API, before it even goes to the human resources. It works very well and enables us to adapt a complete infrastructure-as-code approach.

The real-time telemetry and ecosystem of integrations were also a key part for us when choosing among multiple vendors, because of geo-location. It's very crucial for us. Choosing which server to use, in case of an emergency, for example, we depend on NS1's monitors. It's reliable and hasn't caused us any trouble. Another advantage is that there are multiple regions for the telemetry collections so, even if one of them has an issue, we are confident that there is enough redundancy to let us sail through the problem.

The Filter Chain simulation is really good in the UI, but it would be nice to have something similar in the API so that we could simulate and test things before we deploy them.

And while it's not exactly a problem, a nice-to-have would be a faster API. If we have to make a change to many things, it would be nice if there were a bulk change operation. For example, if we want to change TTL, we would just issue one bulk operation. We can make the calls simultaneously, but there are limits, even if you do things in parallel. 

I have been using NS1 Managed DNS in this company for about five years.

The stability has been very good. We haven't really had major problems. Especially, since we have the Dedicated DNS as well, our setup of NS1, as a whole, the Managed and the Dedicated, is very stable.

We have confidence in NS1 that they will take care of our scaling needs. It's a hosted solution so we just send our traffic to them and, so far, there haven't been any issues.

The solution has helped us to meet SLAs and customers’ demands, without adding complexity. The scalability, when it comes to traffic, is very important because our traffic pattern changes. It's not a straight line on the graph. Scalability is a key feature for us.

When we got started with Dedicated DNS, the technical support worked with us and they were really good and helpful.

The initial was very simple and straightforward. Initially, sending the users to one of the data centers regions was the most complex part, but we had good help from support to understand Filter Chains and to set things up correctly. The process didn't take too long.

We didn't have any downtime when migrating to NS1 because we had external DNS as well.

Our experience with the NS1 customer success team has been good. We have worked closely with them on many occasions. Some of the problems were even new to them, because we had unique features. They were happy to engage and bring in people from their core engineering teams to help. It has been really nice working with NS1's customer success teams. That's one of the biggest advantages of NS1.

I believe we have seen ROI, and that's why we keep going back to them. We've been using them for five years and that is a long time. It's useful for us and it delivers.

We recently evaluated another solution, but the complexity involved with it was slightly high. With NS1, our Filter Chain is cleaner. Also, scaling would add a complexity factor with the other solution.

If someone says they can use a basic DNS, one issue is that it only works to a certain scale. After a certain limit you will have to pay exponentially more. You need to be aware of up to what scale a solution will work for you. Another issue to consider is the flexibility. An enterprise solution has features, such as the Filter Chain, to do complex things, and they might not be available in the free solutions. A third factor is support. That is one of the key features in evaluating these solutions, especially if you're building a product that is critical for a customer. I'm not sure that the free solutions provide that level of support. All of these factors are very good with NS1.

Engage as much as you can with their customer success team. Explain your use cases very well and they will suggest good solutions that are the perfect fit. Keep in touch with their team. NS1 is an evolving product. The more you stay in touch with the customer success and technical support teams, the more likely it is you will be successful.

Also, focus on automation. NS1 is API-driven. The fact that we are really focused on and invested in automation tools has really helped us.

The product is a DNS as a service and we have automated the creation and deletion of all sorts of DNS records.

We needed to have the fastest and most secure and resilient DNS possible, and that's what we got. We don't worry about denial of service attacks on the DNS, as we've seen other large vendors go through. We have access to a significant and forward-thinking feature set that allows us to use things like DNSSEC fairly easily.

Our DNS response times have improved significantly. I have not compared data within the past year but at the time, we looked at a 99.9% evaluation and saw that NS1 was the most effective and fastest solution.

We have access to enterprise tooling that allows us to have a single pane of glass between our internal DNS solutions and our external ones. We also have the ability to use advanced routing techniques with the rules engine or the additional tooling that NS1 provides.

The application traffic management capabilities using the API are excellent. We orchestrate that API using Terraform, which means that there are no manual steps involved in bringing up a piece of infrastructure that needs a DNS record or maintaining hygiene in our DNS records because services are taken down. All of it is orchestrated with the use of the API with Terraform on top to achieve it. Overall, it's a very robust API and it meets our needs.

While it doesn't apply to the entire company, this product allows us to utilize automation through the API, which saves us a significant amount of time and eliminates manual changes that are error-prone.

We have been unaffected by major DDoS attacks because of the architecture.

This product has allowed us to reduce or eliminate DNS maintenance work. I can't estimate how much time this has saved us but being able to use an API versus manual maintenance means that we don't really have to do any maintenance. We've been given a solution that allows us to automate everything that we need to do.

The automation provided by NS1 means that we no longer have to focus on that work, which allows us to assign staff to other tasks. Time is saved because we don't really use manual processes with the DNS. We try to automate everything we do in the DevOps team, so this has been effective for us.

The most valuable features are the DNSSEC and the general reliability and speed of the service. We find that the low latency access to DNS queries has a direct effect on the customer experience. Visiting a site, whether it's an AdTech-based solution or marketing tech, the fact that whatever we're rendering on a page can be rendered better than the industry standard, in terms of time, ensures a better user experience.

The Application Telemetry feature is awesome. This includes latency detection and it allows us to detect where a customer may run into latency on the internet, giving us the opportunity to route around it. It contributes to providing the best user experience for our clients.

Using the Pulsar feature has certainly improved our user experience. Using Pulsar with telemetry monitoring between the customer and the endpoint, we are able to detect traffic and route it appropriately, which ensures the uptime of our applications and web properties. It also ensures that the lowest latency experience is possible.

We would really like them to become a DNS registrar.

I have been using NS1 Managed DNS for approximately seven years, since 2014, across companies.

I don't have any issues with stability.

Scalability-wise, I haven't had any issues with this product. It is being used wherever we're using DNS and as our business grows, it will be utilized more.

We have a DevOps team and an infrastructure team that uses NS1. The DevOps team mainly manages the automation of the cloud infrastructure and tools, whereas the infrastructure team manages our legacy on-premises data center.

This product provides the scalability we need to help meet SLAs and customers' demands without adding complexity, which is very important to us. Although it doesn't happen as often anymore, there can be significant changes in the demand for our service. This has the potential to overwhelm services, just like we see in denial of service attacks. However, the available capacity in NS1 has meant that we've never had a challenge with that.

I have worked with the customer success team and the experience was world-class. They're a customer-first team and they are always available. We reach out to them on Slack and they're always there for us. They're straightforward and transparent about any possible issues that they have on their side and overall, it's a wonderful experience.

The same is true for the product's technical support. They're always there for us and transparent about any challenges.

In the past, the company used Dyn, which is now by Oracle. I have also used UltraDNS.

There were several reasons that we switched. The number one reason is support and service, the second is the forward-thinking functionality and features, and the third reason is the cost.

At this company, the initial setup was very straightforward.

It was an import, and it was completed in a matter of hours or less.

Our implementation strategy was to import or migrate the zones from a previous NS1 account that was owned by another company, and then make the necessary registrar changes. During our migration, there was zero downtime.

I implemented NS1 Managed DNS at my current company. We completed the deployment in-house.

ROI is hard to quantify but in terms of application uptime and customer experience, we have seen a return on our investment.

The cost of this product is one of the reasons that we chose it.

There may be overage costs in addition to the standard licensing fees, although I haven't experienced them.

I looked at the Dyn and UltraDNS solutions. I also looked at Akamai Fast DNS and some of the cloud services. The two main reasons that we chose NS1 are the low-latency DNS, and a feature set that was unique and seemed to be beyond what anyone else was doing.

My advice for anyone who thinks that they don't need a solution like this because they have a free or basic DNS with their cloud provider is that they need to evaluate how DNS solutions may affect the customer experience. They should consider the global footprint of NS1, the network architecture, and where they implement Anycast. If these things don't matter then they're probably not running a business that relies on website revenue or has a website that represents their business.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this product is how easy it was to implement it, and that doing so probably reduces the risk of migrating to a new DNS solution.

This is a product that I have recommended to many different people. In general, I would say that this has been the easiest solution to manage and implement.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.