Robust and slick DNS provider

[FredOnline]

Looking at:

https://www.fastmail.com/help/receiv...etup-nsmx.html

It says:

Log in to the control panel supplied by your domain registrar.
Then look for where you can change the "name servers" for your domain. You want to make sure there are only two values, and that the two values are:

ns1.messagingengine.com
ns2.messagingengine.com

But looking at your screencap those ns records aren't present.

Delete all other records shown there and insert the 2 records required.

TTL: Just looking at the screencap, the ns records show TTL of 86400 - if you set your Fastmail ns records also to 86400 that means 24 hours propagation.

[Terry]

Yea I though they had changed it to fastmail.com a few weeks ago....but the old ns1.messagingengine.com will still work for a while, but I must have it wrong.

Some DNS providers require that you put a . on the end of the MX server names (e.g. in1-smtp.messagingengine.com. rather than in1-smtp.messagingengine.com). Try the version without a . first, and if the DNS provider appends anything, try the version with the . appended.

[jeffpan]

I was a DNS player. the premium list I suggested,

• easyDNS
• DNSimple
• DNSMadeEasy
• NS1

If you want free, then,

• Cloudns.net
• Namecheap
• Rackspace
• Cloudflare

[Terry]

ZoneEdit....with them you can make lots of changes.

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by Terry

ZoneEdit....with them you can make lots of changes.

Long ago, before they were acquired, I used to be very positive about ZoneEdit,. Through inertia I even still have a couple of domains parked there. In honesty, though, I can no longer endorse them. The options suggested by jeffpan are better.

[Terry]

easyDNS is ZoneEdit

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by Terry

Should that now be ns1.fastmail.com ?

Don't confuse the client reading/submission server addresses, the nameserver address (pointing the domain to FastMail hosted DNS records), and the MX server address used to receive email. The security changes which started in late July 2016 changed the addresses used by clients to xxx.fastmail.com:
https://www.fastmail.com/help/accoun...tml?#newserver
The NS and incoming MX addresses still point to xxx.messagingengine.com.

An email client should use the xxx.fastmail.com addresses specified in Help. These used to be xxx.messagingengine.com, but the old addresses are deprecated and you will get warning messages now (or in the near future) if you still use xxx.messagingengine.com with an email client.
https://www.fastmail.com/help/techni...sandports.html

I recommend letting FastMail host your DNS records, using the instructions given in the post by FredOnline. I find this easy to use and I don't need to use my registar's confusing and ancient zone control panel. FastMail automatically creates important DNS entries (any of which you can disable) and you can add you own additional entries. Standard entries automatically generated by FastMail for your domain include:

• MX records enabling incoming mail at your domain and subdomains of that domain
• A records enabling websites at your domain and subdomains of that domain
• DKIM support (allows recipient systems to know that messages you send are received without any changes)
• SPF support, which allows you to control which servers are authorized to send email from your domain (From address at your domain). I have disabled the default FastMail SPF record and in the custom section I add a slightly different SPF record which only allows the FastMail sending servers to be used for my domain.
• SRV records allowing many email clients to automatically configure themselves for use with your domain.
• SRV records allowing CalDAV and CardDAV use

See the complete standard DNS automatically created entries at:
https://www.fastmail.com/help/receiv....html?#dnslist

You can add additional DNS entries at the FastMail domain DNS settings page. I have custom SPF and DMARC settings set up there for my domain.

It's important to understand how TTL (Time To LIve) works before changing any NS or DNS entries. Often the TTL for a record is initially set to a large value such as 3600 seconds (1 hour) or 86400 seconds (1 day) at the host. This means that any changes you make to that entry (such as the Nameserver address) won't have a guaranteed effect for a full day. This delay also applies to changes you make to the TTL setting itself. So the recommended way to change NS or DNS settings is:

• Takes notes on the existing TTL values for your NS and DNS records. This is important!
• Set the TTL for NS and DNS settings you plan to change to a short interval, such as 10 seconds.
• Wait for the original TTL delay you noted in the first step to expire. In other words, if the original TTL was 86400, wait a full day after you change the TTL to 10 seconds. After waiting for that old original delay, you can make changes and they will take effect quickly (in less than a minute when using a 10 second TTL).
• Then change your NS and/or DNS settings as desired. You should see the results of any changes you make within a minute or so, and so you can quickly recover if you make a mistake or need to experiment.
• After you have tested you changes, you should probably change the TTL values back to a larger number of second to improve performance of the DNS lookup. The default FastMail TTL is 1 hour, and I think that's a good value for long-term stable use. But remember that you will need to wait at least an hour in that case to make future changes to any DNS entry. Very short TTL values are good when making changes, but slow down lookups when many accesses are being made in an hour to access your domain in any way.

Bill

[Terry]

Thanks Bill, I just assumed that Fastmail would have also changed the DNS to fastmail.com but the old messagingengine.com.....my mistake.

Really its a lot to type and often can be miss spelt.

[n5bb]

I completely agree with you, Terry! it's always best to go directly to the specific instructions in Help before starting to change any such settings. I only posted after carefully checking the current Help directions, which are quite different than those a couple of years ago.

Bill

[jhollington]

I recommend letting FastMail host your DNS records...

I second this recommendation wholeheartedly.

I've gone several different ways on this one over the years —*I still have about a half-dozen grandfathered "lifetime free" DNS slots at DynDNS, and use EasyDNS as my registrar, so both of those services provide DNS hosting options, but honestly, even if you have a DNS provider with a great control panel, by the time you deal with MX records, SRV records for client discovery, SPF, DMARC, and DKIM, it's just so much easier to let FastMail do the heavy lifting for you. Even if you're hosting your web services somewhere else, a few "A" and "CNAME" records are trivial to set up by comparison.

While there's a certain "all of your eggs in one basket" argument against using FastMail's DNS, registrar-level NS record changes are pretty quick these days, so even in the case of a catastrophic failure of FastMail, it doesn't take much longer to point your DNS to another provider than it would to update your MX records.

That said, I do wish FastMail supported DNSSEC, but I can live without it.