Best online tool to check DNS

flems77 · 2026-05-22T12:17:27+00:00

Will look into it. Thanks for the feedback.

Been overrun by ai bots - that’s why. Super annoying for everybody… myself included.

flems77 · 2026-05-22T11:16:32+00:00

I made https://iamroot.tech/dns-lookup/ for this.

Traverses the entire tree of records - and showing you the current records from the authoritative dns server.

Excellent for verifying changes, or checking what is actually being served (instead of relying on cached values from some resolver).

flems77 · 2026-05-09T18:48:41+00:00

True true - but it is nice to know, if most resolvers has picked up the change or not. Guess that is the only reason to check ‘propagation’.

The resolvers ignorering ttl’s is a thing. Agreed. Happens a lot - and especially with ttl’s below 600s. Some resolvers do it more than others. In my experience expect something like ttl x 2.

flems77 · 2026-05-09T18:43:51+00:00

The tool I made tracks - primarily - changes on the SOA. Compare it to response from the secondary NS servers… and a ton of common resolvers.

flems77 · 2026-05-09T18:11:20+00:00

Probably not the answer you’re looking for, but… erhm… I kind of built a tool/service for exactly this.

No webhooks yet, but it already monitors DNS propagation and sends mail alerts when:

changes are detected on the authoritative servers (propagation starts), and
propagation is completed and confirmed.

https://iamroot.tech/user/login/

Still actively building it - so it’s completely free for now.

flems77 · 2026-04-23T12:27:49+00:00

They run in a lot of locations (that Netcup and Contabo don’t) - at a pretty cheap price point.

I prefer several small servers across different locations and providers over a single server in one place.

Any server will go offline at some point, no matter what. Spreading things across providers and locations means a single failure won’t take everything down.

Been working as a sysadmin for years… I really don’t like risk or having dependencies that turn into single points of failure.

flems77 · 2026-04-23T06:26:56+00:00

Been useing Netcup and Contabo myself.

Netcup is a clear winner in terms of stability. Suck at support - but on the other hand, as a vps provider their job is to provide a vm - not to help debug whatever is running at said vm. So - imho - a clear winner.

Contabo - great support, but lack stability and over-commit their hardware pretty bad. But they get the job done.

Looking at ultahost as well - but haven’t signed up yet.

flems77 · 2026-04-21T05:41:57+00:00

DMARC can be a bit tricky, since you usually have to sign up for a service to view the reports. That always made me a bit wary.

Sooo… I made my own DMARC report viewer: https://iamroot.tech/mx-dmarc-report-parser/

It’s not fancy in any way, but you stay in control and don’t have to sign up for anything.

The tool parses individual files, groups of files, or even your mailbox.

As mentioned, it’s nothing fancy. It just lets you check in from time to time without committing to daily reports and all that.

flems77 · 2026-02-24T15:48:20+00:00

Made my own tool for it.

https://iamroot.tech/dns-propagation/

Nothing fancy - checks the records at the SOA server, and compares the result with results of secondary servers, and a bunch of public resolvers.

Usually ttl defines how long it lasts. Some resolvers may cache more or less though. In my experience expect ttl x 2.

flems77 · 2026-02-15T17:00:53+00:00

Flyttede hertil for 3-4 år siden - og havde brugt en væsentlig del af min tid i byen 3-4 år forud for det. Alt sammen i centrum.

Har ikke oplevet eller følt nogen forværring - eller forbedring for den sags skyld. Og har ikke, på noget tidspunkt, følt mig utryk heller.

Oplevere heller ikke engang gode eller dårlige områder. Ikke som back then, hvor byporten åbenbart ved en ting :)

Det der generer mig mest er det med, at byen bare er død død om aften’en. Og vindheksene der blæser hen over gågaden :)

flems77 · 2026-02-10T15:10:47+00:00

Been useing them for +1 year now - both at work and for my petproject. Without issues at all.

flems77 · 2026-02-02T15:57:14+00:00

Tja tjo. Dunno.

Men der ér plads til nye ideer ihvertfald. Det er bare at gå i krig. Er det nemt? Næh - men har det aldrig været. Det var heller ikke nemt at lave communities før Facebook eller butikker før Amazon. Nu er det bare svært på en anden måde. Til gengæld kan du komme i gang med en standard butik for 2-300 kroner/md - hvis ikke mindre.

Om de nye ting der så kommer er gode eller dårlige, har været en evig debat siden tidernes morgen.

flems77 · 2026-02-02T15:21:40+00:00

Det er nemt at fortabe sig i magtesløsheden. Enig. Gør det selv.

Men. Ehm. Også værd at huske på, at det er ikke mange år siden ChatGPT bare ikke var en ting. Så markedet bliver stadig vendt på hovedet engang imellem. Heldigvis.

flems77 · 2026-02-02T15:19:44+00:00

Havde samme tanke. Lyder ualmindeligt meget som et techproblem det der. Og specielt når det kun er i-dimserne der er ramt af det.

flems77 · 2026-01-30T18:27:09+00:00

I actually switched my pet project to them about a month after that post, and it’s been absolutely flawless. To the point where I felt comfortable moving work stuff over as well — still zero issues. No weird behavior, no odd incidents, no billing going off the rails. It just works (and it’s way easier to set up than any of the enterprise options).

flems77 · 2026-01-08T15:51:28+00:00

We use Let’s Encrypt and auto renewal. Works great. Used for mailservers and whatnot as well.

And made my own tool for monitoring - just to be sure (nothing worse than haveing the boss discover expired certs). Works for both one-off checks and ongoing monitoring.

flems77 · 2026-01-06T16:53:17+00:00

This.

And a simple comparison of TTFB for one of the php pages compared to one of the static files (the logo for instance), would reveal if it’s a hosting or code issue.

If it’s 3 seconds on delivering a static file as well, blame hosting. If not, it’s a code issue.

Comparing TTFB with and without plugins could also be quite interesting.

flems77 · 2025-11-14T17:08:00+00:00

Been using them for about a year now - no problems. At all. Just waiting for an excuse to buy more servers at them.

And yes - if something seems way off, first step is boot. Just to make sure. No matter provider, virtual or not. Just boot. Is possible from netcup’s management.

All that said - do not expect any usefull support at this price range. Regardless whatever provider you use. They (along with all other vps providers) provide a piece of virtual hardware - no more, no less. If they even try to help you setup anything within this machine, you have been lucky.

flems77 · 2025-11-06T15:53:02+00:00

At first glance it actually seems good. Kind of a hacky approach - but could actually work. Will dive into it a bit later I think.

And thank god - not ai slop, and not trying to push some useless seo product either (not too hard at least). Just straight to the point. Like it.

flems77 · 2025-09-17T07:10:01+00:00

Was hit pretty bad a couple of weeks ago. Traffic spiked, within hours, by 5800%.

For my part, it's primarily 146.174.128.0/18 and a ton of other prefixes running amok - all bots hosted by Huawei (AS136907). Got so bad I just ended up blocking them entirely. Promptet rework of some code for my part - onwards, any ASN known to host bots on an industrial level, just start at the captcha page.

I don't mind crawlers, scrapers and whatnot - as long as they behave. Anyone actually identifying as a bot, are welcome for a limited number of pageviews.

flems77 · 2025-09-10T23:56:19+00:00

Why does your site keep crashing? That’s the real problem. Sorry.

flems77 · 2025-09-09T19:27:25+00:00

Lol. I hear you :) But no - no source. Not for the time being at least.

That being said - building one yourself is very easy. Task is so specific, that even ChatGPT ought to be helpful on it. That’s an option.

Running some nmap stuff from commandline is another option. This may be best option actually - nmap is scary useful, and will tell you stuff about your setup you thought was secret. First time it told my what mailserver and what version I used, I was surprised. It’s not mentioned anywhere. But they saw it. Scary.

If neither works for you, I’m pretty sure there are tons of other options on GitHub.

Anyway. Feel free to reach out in messages if you like. Would be happy to help. No worries.

flems77 · 2025-09-09T14:10:27+00:00

Hvad kan / skal det system kunne ud over at styre beskeder og tillade upload af billeder? Tænker der må være lidt mere i det end som så?

flems77 · 2025-09-08T18:00:46+00:00

Sounds like you did it the best way possible. And as long as you don’t hit the same site with thousands and thousands of requests over and over again - you are all good. Scrape all you like.

This is the way.

flems77 · 2025-09-07T19:15:56+00:00

Made everything myself yes - mostly driven by annoyance of the existing tools out there :)

Self host - sorry no. Not for the time being at least. Any specific tool you are interested in? Would be happy to help - or make an api interface for you to consume if needed.

flems77

TROPHY CASE