I use everydns.net. They have a easy to use web interface and are totally free.

Granitecanyon are also free but are kind of difficult to set up.

I will second this recommendation, everydns has been quite reliable over the two years I have had my dns with them. The only downside is they don't offer a txt record entry, so you can't put in spf records.

(if you don't know what I am talking about http://spf.pobox.com/intro.html )

What about DynDNS (http://www.dyndns.org)?

I used ZoneEdit as a DNS server to recover form a bad choice of domaoin registrars.

I had the misfortune of picking NameSecure as my registrar. I picked them because they said they were inexpensive ($7.95) and would provide DNS.

1) "7.95" is per year for a five-year sign-up. No, thanks. My cost was
actually $13.00/year for two years. ($130.00 for 5 domains.)

2) Namesecure's tech support is absolutely horrible: no phone number, e-mail bounces because it's overloaded. I had to use Fax.

3) their "free" DNS is highly restricted. If you want MX records (necessary if you want to run your own e-mail server) they charge extra. When I found this out I looked into alternatives. ZoneEdit gives you 5 zones for free (a "zone" is a domain) and on two servers. Their web interface is quite easy to use.


Incidentally, if you really want to set of your own DNS and control it locally, you can still use ZoneEdit or another free DNS as a secondary DNS. A secondary DNS watches your main DNS, so you can make your modifications on your main DNS and never touch the secondary after you set it up.

Another vote for ZoneEdit.

Very easy to use, and free for up to 5 domains. Dyndns.org is good too, but it's only free if you use one of their subdomains. If you want to use your own TLD you have to use Custom DNS which is $24.95/year per domain.

I am in the process of finalizing the setup of the service that I previously mentioned. I would like to make this available to Linode users first and then open it up to the general public once I see how it performs. I need 10 beta users who can provide feedback and help to interpret some of the DNS RFC Specs. If you are interested then send an email via this link http://www.snowprods.com/sm.php?domains/snowprods/com

By default, the following record types would be supported : SOA, NS, A, MX

I also plan to add support for PTR, LOC, TXT, and CNAME prior to general public availability.

Thus far, I have only been using SOA, NS, A, and MX for my needs. As I understand it, Linode users will never need PTR support as this is handled by Linode for us. I'm not sure how widely this kind of support would actually be needed by the general public.

I have seen several comments about needing TXT and LOC records being a nice thing to have available. I have also seen some references to CNAME entries but I'm not sure what the benefits would be compared to an A entry.

If you can provide feedback on these issues and are capable of and able to test at least one domain with several of these entries, please let me know.

I have several questions....I have registered a domain w/ godaddy. Now, how do I go about pointing my static ip to that domain and where do I get the nameserver information. I guess maybe someone with some experience with godaddy probably knows a lot more about this than I do. I really am a novice with this, so the more explicit the explanation, the better. I really appreciate any help I can get.

_________________
Thank You,

David

[quote="David Ranieri"]I have several questions....I have registered a domain w/ godaddy. Now, how do I go about pointing my static ip to that domain and where do I get the nameserver information. I guess maybe someone with some experience with godaddy probably knows a lot more about this than I do. I really am a novice with this, so the more explicit the explanation, the better. I really appreciate any help I can get.[/quote]

I'm switching DNS from my linode to godaddy, the registrar
I already use. Total DNS Control is awesome. Call me at
205-854-4697 and I'll walk you through it. Won't take 5 min.

Less load on the Linode - excellent. I always found BIND
somewhat tedious to set up, myself.

James

Bind is fairly trivial and from what I can remember, the godaddy setup was as well during the short-time that I used it.

As far as the original offer in this thread, consider it rescinded as there are many other options out there that are probably light-years beyond what I can do at this moment.