Deerfield Hosting, Inc.

High Performance Web Hosting

10 YEARS !!

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The domain names deerfieldhosting.com and deerfieldhosting.net were registered on November 16th, 2002.

A lot has changed since then.

We had a reseller account on a server which was overloaded and provided terrible service.  BUT, the pay per click advertising was working.  The initial $300 was getting recycled over and over.  The revenue from new signups was slightly more than the advertising cost.  Since it was clear that the business model was working we took the plunge and rented our first dedicated server.

We were running a control panel called Ensim, having taken a cue from the former account.  It was (is?) so bad that the number of accounts you could add to a server was constrained not by how busy the sites were, but by the overhead imposed by the control panel itself.  And I mean by a factor of 10.  The control panel hogged up server resources at a rate easily 10 times the sites.

We limped along with Ensim for several years, adding server after server to get good performance.  What a relief it was to ditch it and move to cPanel and FreeBSD.  It felt like I’d gone to heaven.

Of the first 5 customers to sign up, we still have 3.  The other 2 are no longer on the Internet.  I like to think that means we are doing something right.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Deerfield Hosting !!

Domain Registrations and Name Servers

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It’s simple. A domain registration has the sole function of specifying DNS servers.  In order to find services provided for your domain name, a number called an IP address is required.  DNS servers map names to these numbers.  The DNS servers have entries like:

BaileysKarate.com -> 216.185.152.158
www.BaileysKarate.com -> 216.185.152.158

They give out this information when asked.

DNS servers are controlled by hosting companies so that they can provide services on IP addresses they chose. Customers register domains and set the DNS servers as instructed by their hosting company. When they switch hosting companies, they can modify their registration to use the DNS servers from the new company. And that is really all there is to that.

To change hosting providers, all you have to do is log in to your account with us or where ever you bought your domain name and change the DNS servers it is set to use. Nothing needs to get transferred. It’s just a settings change which is very easy to do.

Of course this assumes that you have access to and control your domain registration. Sometimes hosting companies subsume control to make it much harder for their clients to leave them. That’s a subject for a different post.  At Deerfield Hosting, we always register domains in our customers’ name.  If you paid for your domain registration, you should control it!