Like every other premium DNS offering on the market, the pricing of IBM NS1 Connect is based in part on the number of inbound DNS queries to your domains every month. This standard usage-based pricing model is popular with our customers, since it means that they aren’t paying for unnecessary capacity. You only pay for the resources you consume – a key advantage over self-hosted DNS architectures in particular.
Each business tends to have its own unique rhythm of DNS traffic. Some companies are lucky enough to have a background pattern that’s consistent over time, even accounting for seasonal variations (like the Christmas season for retail businesses). These companies can generally predict what their DNS usage will look like and plan their budgets with a reasonable confidence level.
Many companies don’t have this luxury. They experience wild swings in DNS traffic, making it difficult to discern any underlying pattern that can help with budgets and planning. In addition to constant shifts in the websites and applications people consume, there are plenty of other factors that can make DNS traffic unpredictable. New product releases, M&A activity, and changes in network infrastructure can all contribute to significant changes in DNS traffic.
Dive deeper with historical query reporting
At IBM, we pride ourselves on transparency, particularly when it comes to billing. We’ve always been happy to generate reports and share data with our customers about DNS traffic patterns to help them plan and budget. Our customer success team frequently works with customers to dig through historical data, helping them understand the underlying patterns that play into their bill. Through our scheduled reports feature, we’ve also offered the ability to automatically generate data on DNS configurations over time.
Now we’re introducing a new feature that gives our customers the ability to generate usage reports on their own, without the need to contact our customer success team for assistance.
DNS administrators can use this feature to generate custom reports on inbound DNS queries and correlate that data to their IBM NS1 Connect bill. We’ve included a wide range of data factors in this tool, allowing deep dives into the root causes of fluctuations in DNS traffic patterns.
Reporting parameters and options
With this new historical query reporting feature, you’ll be able to generate reports on your entire DNS infrastructure or smaller subsets, helping to pinpoint variations in traffic patterns. Here’s a list of the parts of your network you’ll be able to hone in on for reporting:
- The entire network
- Single network
- Single record
- Single zone
- For each network
- For each zone
- For each record
- Top 100 records
- Top 100 zones
You’ll also be able to produce reports using various data sets, such as:
You’ll be able to generate these reports for daily or monthly query counts, or you can refine it to your specific billing period. Reports will be available for up to a year within the NS1 Connect portal, or you can download the information in CSV or JSON formats to retain for your records.
Ready to generate some usage reports? Learn more about this new feature in our help center or check it out in the “reports” tab in the NS1 Connect portal.
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