Private · non-commercial · since 2014
From the wire
to the name.
ethdns is hosting for private projects, private infrastructure and solutions, run by its administrators. It carries our own services and the projects of others. This site is the point of contact for all of it.
What ethdns is
The name dates back to 2014, when ethdns was a DNS hosting service. That service is closed; the domain and the name live on. eth stands for the network, dns for the names people type.
Today ethdns is hosting for private projects, private infrastructure and solutions, put together from the hosting, DNS, cloud and DDoS protection of several providers. The expertise, the responsibility and the approach come from the old project.
ethdns is private and non-commercial: nothing is sold here. We are, however, open to proposals.
It carries services run by the administrators and projects of third parties, public and private: websites, domains and media services, dedicated and virtual servers and the solutions built on them, network links and connectivity, and more. More about the project.
- What
- private infrastructure and the projects that run on it
- Operated by
- the administrators of ethdns
- Status
- private, non-commercial, open to proposals
- Carries
- own services and third-party projects: sites, domains, media, dedicated and virtual servers, connectivity
- Covers
- ethdns.com, the names under it and the addresses they point to
- Reports
- reviewed and acted on, best effort
- Language
- English
Why you might be here
ethdns carries a lot: services we run for ourselves and projects that belong to other people. Even our own services can cause trouble. Something may look broken, behave in an odd way or simply raise a question.
Other projects on our network belong to third parties. We do not answer for what they publish, but we do not look away either: credible reports are acted on.
So here you are. Write to us, and we will sort it out.Four addresses cover almost everything. Replies come only from @ethdns.com.
Outages
Something run by the administrators is down or broken. Check the status page first.
noc@ethdns.comOr perhaps you use one of our services and have a proposal, commercial or otherwise. See Proposals.
proposals@ethdns.comStandards we follow
Networks run by strangers work together because they keep the same rules. We keep the written ones, published as RFCs, and the unwritten ones about behaving well on a shared network. Each of them protects someone. The details are on the Standards page.
01Integrity and ethics
A rule published and not kept is worth nothing. In everything we run ourselves, we stay within the law and common ethical norms, and we stand against violations wherever we meet them. What we cannot do is answer for third parties: their projects are theirs, and so is the responsibility. Ours is to act when we learn about a problem.
In practice
- We keep the rules we ask others to keep
- Owners answer for their own projects; we act on reports about themLegal
02Good conduct on a shared network
The internet has no central authority that keeps order. It works because operators can reach each other and act on what they hear. A network that ignores its abuse mailbox soon becomes a home for attackers, and the rest of the internet starts blocking it.
03Privacy
Every piece of data collected is a piece that can leak, be sold or be misused. The safest data is the data nobody collected. Visiting a website or writing to an address should not cost anyone their privacy.
In practice
- Nothing about anyone is collected without asking, apart from the standard server logPrivacy
- No cookies, no tracking scripts, no advertising, and so no cookie banner
04Protection from spam and forgery
Most of the mail in the world is spam, and a sender address takes seconds to forge. Every server that lets spam out, or makes forgery easy, helps phishing and fraud. Mail with our names on it should really come from us, and nothing we run should send mail nobody asked for.
05Encryption
Anything sent in clear text can be read or changed on the way, by the Wi-Fi in a café as easily as by anyone else on the path. Encryption protects the visitor first, and it proves that a site is really the one it claims to be.
06IPv6 everywhere
New IPv4 addresses ran out years ago, and a large share of traffic, above all on mobile networks, already travels over IPv6. A service that speaks only IPv4 pushes those users through translation layers that add delay and break things.
In practice
- New services are planned for IPv6 from day one, next to IPv4RFC 8200
- Reverse DNS and mail authentication cover IPv6 addresses too
What we do not allow
On anything we run or carry, no matter who owns it.
- Spam and any other unsolicited bulk mail.
- Phishing, fraud and pretending to be someone else.
- Malware, botnets and the servers that control them.
- Attacks on other networks: floods, mass scanning, password guessing.
- Material that sexually exploits children. We remove it as soon as we see it or are told about it.
- Copyright infringement and misuse of personal data.
- Using our name to look trustworthy: forged headers, borrowed hostnames.
ethdns is non-commercial and run by people. Now and then one of us is ill or away, so a reaction can take longer than we would like. Serious cases always come first.
What we welcome
The things that make the network better for everyone on it.
- New technology, tried carefully and then put to real work.
- Better connectivity: IPv6, shorter routes, links that stay up.
- Fast, reliable services.
- Open standards and tools that work well with each other.
- People who build things.
- Clear reports that point to a real problem, even a small one.
How we do it
The administrators have been building and running internet services since long before ethdns: networks, servers, mail, DNS and the applications on top of them. That experience decides more than any single tool. The tools still matter, so we choose them with care and keep them current.
We build systems and keep them running. We prefer things that are simple and well understood to things that are clever and fragile. Sooner or later something breaks. When it does, we want to be the first to know and to fix it before anyone has to write to us.
- Open source first. Open code can be checked and does not lock anyone in. Commercial tools where they are genuinely better.
- Current software. Supported versions only. Updates are applied on purpose, by a person who has read what changed.
- Monitoring. What matters is watched continuously, and alerts go to people, not to a screen nobody looks at.
- Encryption by default. HTTPS everywhere and signed outgoing mail.
- Protection at the edge. CDN and DDoS protection where a project needs them, from providers built for it.
- Isolation. Each project runs apart from the others, so a problem in one stays there.
- Backups. Kept away from the systems they protect and checked on a schedule.
Providers we choose
We choose providers the way we choose tools: by how well they do the job. Each one covers the part it does best. When a better option appears, we are free to move.
Names belong to their owners. They are listed because we rely on their work, not because they endorse ethdns. Where a company has changed owners, we say so in brackets and keep the name the market knows.
Hardware
We have a soft spot for Dell: PowerEdge servers have earned it over many years, and they remain our first choice. The others are not forgotten. We work with whatever the task needs, whatever we like to use and whatever the people we work with ask for, from MikroTik to Arista and Cisco. Disks go into hardware or software RAID, SAS or NVMe, depending on the job.
Network
Names and logos belong to their owners. They name the equipment we work with; no manufacturer sponsors or endorses ethdns. Where a brand has changed owners or names, we say so in brackets and keep the name the market knows.
Open source
Most of what we build stands on open source: the operating systems, virtualization and storage underneath everything else. We pick the systems and tools that fit each task.
Names and logos belong to their projects and owners.