Assembling Self-Branded Services On The Cheap

Outsourced services exist that permit Web hosting resellers to enhance their service roster. These services can be developed into a full, integrated suite of services by the innovative hosting vendor, which are self-branded. Many of these services revolve around domain name registration and maintenance due to the de-regulation of many top-level domains. As an added service, many hosting resellers are offering turnkey domain name management solutions as a self-branded ancillary to plain-vanilla hosting services.

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DNS management is one of the most popular options that resellers offer and many consumers desire. Many domain management services exist that allow consumers to self-manage their domain portfolios. With the increasingly widespread deployment of broadband Internet connections, many individuals and small businesses have begun to run their own Internet-based services (such as Web and FTP servers for personal use).

One of the problems which users face is assigning a domain name to such services. Most broadband Internet providers will only offer their consumers one IP address, usually a dynamic address, thereby restricting the consumer from running their own DNS services.

DNS management allows individuals users to outsource the administration of all of their domains, permitting them to self-allocate domain names to different external IP addresses, even dynamic IP addresses, through an easy-to-use Web interface. In essence, DNS management allows users to lease DNS services from a third party to assign domain names to their Internet services that reside on a different network.

Web-based DNS management allows a resellers' customers to use name servers that you provider for their domain. Using their Internet browser they can self-manage their domain names, by being able to add, remove, and edit alias records (host records).

Another component of DNS management that can also be separately marketed is Web and e-mail forwarding. Many DNS management packages exist which allow individuals to point specific domain names to specific Web and mail services. Utilizing a self-management user interface online, consumers can also add, remove and update MX records (mail server records), NS records (name server records), and CNAME (canonical name) records.

Consumers obtain a huge amount of value from such services because they obtain and retain total control over their DNS records for their own domain, without the hassle or cost of maintaining their own DNS server.

Such services are also popular with system administrators who seek secondary/backup domain servers. Because DNS servers feed into a "distributed system" that resolves all requests for name-based Internet resources, many system administrators elect to utilize them in order to create a level of redundancy. If the originating two DNS servers are not available due to a physical or network outage, then the secondary sets of DNS servers will provide name resolution.

Since DNS management systems have become extremely popular, their has been a proliferation of inexpensive and in-depth software packages and online services which resellers can integrate into their core service offerings, in order to bring a new dimension of value-added services to the clients. Along with basic commodity hosting, many consumers expect some level of domain name management to accompany their service provision. An investment in a solid DNS management system is hence a wise choice made by resellers who wish to keep their roster of services competitive.