Ok ok ...

What would he need hundreds of thousands of IPs for? He's talking about running a DNS redirect, not hosting the sites himself.

In theory, it should be able to handle it. At the very least, it can provide a good start while you build your revenue to the point where you can afford a few other Linodes to roll your own DNS infrastructure.

_________________

/* TODO: need to add signature to posts */

You're right, sorry, I missed that from the original post.

Shouldn't use Linode's DNS services for that. They're provided free to Linode customers for their own stuff, but using it to run a DNS host (rather than, as I thought, hosting DNS for customer websites) isn't cool.

But I don't want to buy hundreds of thousands of IP addresses.

I must have missed something, but I have tried to explain that other people would enter their nameservers, not mine.

Again, I want to create a service where other people can register subdomains for my domain and make these subdomains act like normal domains by allowing the users to set their own nameservers for this subdomain.

How would I achieve something like this?



This is very true, thanks for the enlightment.

- Tom

You can't, sub domains cannot have separate name servers.

_________________
Paid support
How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
3. Post relevant logs.
4. Don't hide details i.e. your domain, it just makes things harder
5. Be polite or you'll be eaten by a grue

Here's how I'm reading this:

Your end goal is to have one system, which you control.

Someone else will connect to your system, and, through a scripted process, pick a subdomain of your domain. The script will add an entry to your dns in order to point that subdomain to a server owned by that other person.

You intend for this system to scale to "hundred of thousands" of subdomains.

Here's my views on the above:

For starters, the idea that you're creating something which will expand to "hundreds of thousands" of users is very unrealistic, and so planning around it is very unnecessary. That's like building a children's bike to handle the weight of a 2 ton child, because one day you might find a hypothetical child that weighs that much.

Also, doing something like this with Linode's DNS servers would be (IMO) controversial, as those servers are provided for Linode's servers, not for external users.

Maybe if you elaborated a bit on *why* you want to do this, we'd be more able to help you, as it stands, I'm puzzled by what you're actually trying to accomplish.

Yes they can; you can delegate subdomains. See here.

_________________
/ Peter

I didn't know about that you learn something new every day. However reading that linode's name servers would still be queried since

"Finally it is important to remember that as far as the internet registration authorities and root/TLD name-servers are concerned sub-domains do not exist. All queries for anything which ends with example.com will be directed to the name-servers for the example.com zone. The example.com name servers are responsible for redirecting the query to any sub-domain name-servers."

It just allows configuration to be passed on to another server.

_________________
Paid support
How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
3. Post relevant logs.
4. Don't hide details i.e. your domain, it just makes things harder
5. Be polite or you'll be eaten by a grue

I have a feeling that the OP wants to run a dynamic dns service with his domain name and have people "register" a subdomain and update their IP.

One thing to note about Linode's dns service is that it refreshes every 15 minutes which is far too high for that type of service. It's best if you run your own dns server on your Linode.

This is correct.

So, where should I look to learn how to create such dns server for my linodes?

Thanks.

Hard to say. You might want to start first with selecting a dns server software (e.g. Bind, tinydns, etc.) and then from there, start googling for pre-made package of software/scripts to run a dynamic dns service (rather than write one from scratch). At least you'll have something to work from and be able to customize for your needs.

I don't quite understand how this would work though.

Are there any resources available that'd explain why I need to do this and how?

This statement makes it sound like you're attempting to start a project far beyond your knowledge bracket.

Besides asking "how" maybe you should ask "why"?

There's already hundreds of free dynamic DNS providers - why does the world (or more importantly your prospective clients) need another one?