Oracle Buys Dyn DNS Provider (techcrunch.com)

Oracle announced today it is buying DNS provider Dyn, a company that was in the press lately after it was hit by a large-scale DDoS attack in October that resulted in many popular websites becoming inaccessible. From a TechCrunch report:Oracle plans to add Dyn's DNS solution to its bigger cloud computing platform, which already sells/provides a variety of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) products. Oracle and Dyn didn't disclose the price of the deal but we are trying to find out. Dan Primack reports that it's around $600 million. We've also asked for a comment from Oracle about Dyn's recent breach, and whether the wheels were set in motion for this deal before or after the Mirai botnet attack in October.

Comments

/. Headline 6 months from now

[udachny]

Expect lawsuits related to your free use of DNS. Now everybody who uses DNS owes Oracle 1 dollar per DNS lookup.

So right after their value gets depressed?

[tlambert]

So right after their value gets depressed?

Not suspicious at all...

Re: So right after their value gets depressed?

[ArmoredDragon]

Why would their value get depressed? They didn't do anything wrong. I don't know why TFS calls it a breech even though nothing was breeched.

CDOS?

[swm]

If Oracle buys a DNS provider, does that constitute a centralized denial-of-service attack?

Re:CDOS?

[Big Hairy Ian]

No but I do expect the quality of DNS to slip drastically as Oracle downgrade it to the same level as the rest of their products

Re:CDOS?

[Curunir_wolf]

No but I do expect the quality of DNS to slip drastically as Oracle downgrade it to the same level as the rest of their products

Don't forget that down the line, if you're using an Oracle product, you're going to need to use the Oracle DNS service because that's the only one they support. DNS connection problems with your Oracle product? Yea, you're not using OracleDNS, so your whole stack is unsupported.

Looking for alternatives

[BDeblier]

As a Dyn customer, who refuses to give even one lousy cent to Oracle, I'll be on the lookout for alternatives. Suggestions are welcome.

Re:Looking for alternatives

[Z00L00K]

I have a service through http://www.enom.com/hosting/dn... which seems to work fine for me.

Re:Looking for alternatives

[lactose99]

Been using https://www.zoneedit.com/ for years, although I'm on the cheaper end of the spectrum. Not sure how enterprise-y you need your DNS

Seems extreme quick unless it was already underway

[raymorris]

When I've sold even the tiniest companies, with just two or three employees, it took a few months from initial discussion to a public announcement. I'd be very surprised if a deal this size was done in a month or two. I'd think they probably had a memorandum of understanding, setting a price subject to due diligence, six months ago.

They keep using that word.

[Osiris Ani]

“We've also asked for a comment from Oracle about Dyn's recent breach”

Since when does a DDoS qualify as a “breach?”

Sigh

[ledow]

Ba-da dum-dum-dum. Another one bites the dust...

Sorry Dyn. I was a customer of yours. But everything that Oracle touches is to eliminate competition and kill the products that existed.

It was nice knowing you.

Anyone know of a way to set up your own Dyn-compatible dynamic DNS system? I have a remote server, and a way to change the dyndns.org URLs in use but I think the protocol is undocumented or certain without available SERVER software (client software is another matter).

And most of the things I want to change that use it are hardcoded into the Dyn protocols, so I can't just "use something else", even if the devices allow the end-address to be changed to my own server.

Re:Sigh

[HBI]

When I was hosting with Linode, they had an API call to update a DNS A record. As long as you requested a key from them, you could write a script on a local host to reach out to them and update the A record when the box or router would change addresses. Replicating that functionality if you need it should be fairly trivial.

Solution to stop acquisitions?

[bradley13]

I wish there were some solution to stop acquisitions like this: a small company with a decent product is consumed by some multinational giant. The product may live on for a few years, but ultimately it gets transmogrified into something unrecognizable and - as often as not - useless. But the multinational now has the patents needed to prevent competition.

Look at what Oracle is trying to do with Java: suing Google for using the fricking APIs. Microsoft is renowned for this as well: "extend, embrace, extinguish".

While I'm no fan of government regulation, I have the feeling that this is part-and-parcel of "too big to fail", and requires government intervention. Companies should not be allowed to grow beyond a certain size. If a company reaches that size, it must divest or split itself into smaller, independent entities.

Re:Solution to stop acquisitions?

[geekmux]

I wish there were some solution to stop acquisitions like this...Companies should not be allowed to grow beyond a certain size. If a company reaches that size, it must divest or split itself into smaller, independent entities.

We do (or at least did) have such protections in place, in the form of anti-monopoly laws.

They are blatantly ignored today with 55-gallon drums of palm grease, brought forth by the very monopolies who maintain lobbyist armies.

Capitalism used to be king. Corruption is now, because those who could do something about it don't give a shit.

Re:Solution to stop acquisitions?

[Lawrence_Bird]

There is no barrier to entry. Go find some VC funding and start a competitor.

Re:Solution to stop acquisitions?

[gtall]

Bzzzzt. Wrong. With the new Republican majority and The Cheeto, they find regulations abhorrent. So there'll be no regulatin' on their watch. How does this square with their whining about banks too big to fail? It doesn't, but contradictions like this never bothered them.

Re: Another company to die a slow death under Orac

[corychristison]

How many domains?

I am a customer of Softlayer, and their free (for customers) Anycast DNS service is absolutely fantastic. I piggyback my clients onto their DNS (~100 domains including my own) and we've never seen an issue.

Another company I've had experience with is ClouDNS.net. I moved to softlayer simply because they offered Anycast and it was free with a server I'm renting from them. ClouDND.net now offers Anycast. I'm planning to use them as a secondary DNS in conjunction with Softlayer, because, well, redundancy.

Remember the early Dyn?

[Bruce Perens]

I think Dyn started out as a community effort rather than an explicit for-profit. I signed on back then. I seem to remember signing on for something long-term, for not much money. Not long after that they went commercial. My sign-on was supposed to be carried over to a year's service or something, I don't remember and I didn't pursue it because I was only interested in the community effort.

Re:Remember the early Dyn?

[FreelanceWizard]

I remember those days. I was one of the paid community supporters before they went commercial, and when they did, I got free lifetime custom DNS service for a single domain as well as free lifetime premium service for dynamic DNS in the dyndns.org domain. The quality of Dyn as a provider, and their willingness to keep their end of that deal (unlike, say, Joyent), is why I use them as my registrar and why I've recommended them professionally despite the fact that there are far less expensive alternatives (such as AWS Route 53 or Azure DNS).

Shortly after the deal closes and integration begins, I expect that my lifetime service will be terminated ("to better serve our customers"), the cost will skyrocket (because this is Oracle we're talking about), and I'll be forced to move to another provider. It was fun while it lasted, I suppose...

Re: Remember the early Dyn?

[Rob_Bryerton]

I do remember. I signed on for some light-weight services when they were small (like you mentioned) and signed up for some lifetime something or other. Really, it was like paying for 2 years up front or something cheap like that so I thought 'what the heck'. A while later, I had forgotten all about my account there, but needed the service there again, so I reset my password, signed in and to my surprise saw that I had been grandfathered into to a lifetime subscription even though they went commercial. Which I thought was really cool of them.

We'll see if Oracle honors that service tier...

Re: From dynamic DNS script to being bought by Ora

[corychristison]

Dyn grew by buying up small time DNS providers... a lot of them!

If I recall correctly, Slashdot had a few discussions about how large they were getting buying out other providers, and how bad it was to place so much trust in a single company.

Re: From dynamic DNS script to being bought by Ora

[arth1]

If I recall correctly, Slashdot had a few discussions about how large they were getting buying out other providers, and how bad it was to place so much trust in a single company.

And now we see how bad it was, and how right people were.
I honestly cannot think of a company that I think could be worse. Blizzard or Symantec, perhaps. No, Oracle is still worse.

dns.he.net

[higuita]

dns.he.net

it is free, works very well
yes, it do not have all the features of dyn, but have what i need