With the domain name registration business clearly thriving, one company is turning its attention to a largely untapped market: providing a better infrastructure for the Domain Name System. Its biggest challenge, however, may be in convincing customers that they need it.
Start-up UltraDNS this week will launch a distributed Domain Name System server outsourcing service, designed to provide reliable, high-performance domain name lookups. DNS servers translate domain names into machine-readable Internet Protocol addresses -- a critical function that is often taken for granted, said Steve Hotz, UltraDNS' chief technical officer.
"We're taking an important part of the Internet's infrastructure and making it a carrier-class service," Hotz said. "If DNS doesn't work, you're not in business."
UltraDNS initially plans to operate servers in 10 cities worldwide located at AboveNet Communications and Exodus Communications facilities. The service runs its own proprietary DNS software -- "a total rewrite of the DNS server," Hotz said -- running on top of an Oracle database.
Hotz said UltraDNS' code is more scalable and secure than BIND, the freeware that runs most of the DNS servers on the Internet, and provides better management features. With its current infrastructure, UltraDNS can handle 9 million domain names and 1 billion DNS queries per month, he said.
But will ISPs and their customers view DNS servers as enough of a pain point to enlist the services of UltraDNS? According to a Keynote study commissioned by the company, DNS lookups fail just 0.65 percent of the time -- hardly a full-blown operational crisis. But Hotz said UltraDNS addresses a bigger issue: providing a system able to handle the expected explosion of domain names. Network Solutions expects the number of domain names to grow from about 15 million today to more than 160 million by 2003.
For now, UltraDNS will be challenged to convince prospective customers of the value of its services, said Aberdeen Group analyst Michael Hoch. "They have to educate the market that DNS is a bigger problem than it is currently viewed," he said. "I think it's a first-order problem that people don't realise they have."
The company certainly has technical credibility. Hotz was the protege of Paul Mockapetris and the late Jon Postel, inventors of the DNS. Rodney Joffe, UltraDNS' chairman, created the Hopscotch multisite load-balancing technology for Genuity. The 30-person company, formed last year out of a research project by the CenterGate Research Group, has received US$8 million in first-round financing from VantagePoint Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates.
UltraDNS is pitching its offering to ISPs, domain name registrars and online businesses. Initial customers include Broadstream.com, CNet Networks' mySimon.com, PlasmaNet's FreeLotto, Gig.com and Name Engine's RegisterFree. Pricing will be based on the number of domain names and monthly DNS queries; for example, a customer with 1,000 domains with 2 million to 4 million queries per month would pay about US$700 per month.
