Obvious answer would be to use the usual factors for outsourcing... if
you think you can do it better yourself then do it yourself, if not
then let someone else do it. However I am going to propose that
whichever option you chose as your first answer, you also do the other
as well.

DNS is one of those protocols that is so cheap and easy to get right
that loads of people get it wrong out of pure laziness. Most of the
time it takes next to no resources and just works, and people don't
consider failure modes until they actually happen. With DNS all you
need is for at least 1 server to be up and it will resolve, so where
most protocols adding more servers and more complexity can lead to
more failure modes, with DNS the more variety you have, the more
failure modes you are protected from.

If you fully outsource to a single provider, if one of their other
customers gets attacked you will go down. If you go for the
outsourcing option then I would suggest that you also fork out
£5/month for a small VPS somewhere purely to act as an additional
secondary, that way if your provider goes down due to an attack on
another customer it won't effect you. Chances are you already have
some kind of web server or something that could act as your secondary
for no additional cost.

If you decide to do it yourself and set up your own DNS servers, if
someone targets you then it will be trivial for them to take you
completely offline. Add a secondary server from a reputable DNS
provider. If you get an attack directed at your own servers, they will
continue to respond for you and keep the domains resolving. If you are
taking this option then in this case "reputable" actually means "big",
a small DNS provider can't absorb the load and will sacrifice you to
protect their servers.

Yes this is the most expensive and most complicated option, but it is
still trivially cheap and a few minutes of extra effort. Is your
reputation worth the investment?

- Mike Jones


On 4 February 2015 at 23:57, Ryan Finnesey <[email protected]> wrote:
> We are about to enter the domain registration business in the UK and trying 
> to decide if we won't to run DNS in-house or outsource.  If we where to 
> outsource who would the group recommended we have a chat with.  The domain 
> business won't be our focus we will most likely offer domains at cost.
>
> Cheers
> Ryan
>
> Sent from my iPad

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