We performed a comparison between BlueCat Integrity and IBM NS1 Connect based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Managed DNS solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."DNS aliases, which we use extensively in our applications are a valuable feature."
"As a defense contractor, we must meet many compliance standards regarding logging, configuration, and administrative access. BlueCat is one of the few products that combines all the compliance components in a secure, reliable solution."
"One of the key features enabling us to operate at our current scale is robust automation."
"The most significant advantage of BlueCat is its foundation on open-source software, specifically BIND and ISC DHCP."
"The most valuable piece, which has been a lifesaver, would be the BlueCat DNS resolver. BlueCat Cloud DNS resolver is a tool that takes a look into your cloud's DNS and then reports back everything it finds into BlueCat's DNS Edge solution. The Edge solution has a bunch of nice rules that you can configure to route the DNS traffic. That automation alone is a lifesaver for me for the day-to-day churn of the DNS components that change on an hourly, daily basis."
"Since implementing BlueCat, we have experienced fewer problems, anomalies, and strange issues."
"Adaptive DNS's best feature is DDoS protection, which stops malware and network security attacks."
"I've been impressed by BlueCat's performance and user-friendly GUI."
"For starters, it integrates with Terraform and a lot of our infrastructure is effectively built out using Terraform. That makes all this stuff extremely easy... when we deploy, all the entries are created and configuration is done."
"Monitoring is really important for us. We really care about reliability, and we want to make sure that we can remove some points of presence in our sector and in our edge network really fast when we experience any problems. So, monitoring that NS1 provides for DNS is really important for us."
"The Filter Chain is one of the most valuable features, for geo-load balancing and geo-fencing. The Filter Chain is the most useful because it allows us to do several things. With geo-fencing we can redirect a particular user to a particular answer. That's very valuable for us. Filter Chains with monitoring is our strategy to provide redundancy."
"Their Pulsar filters allow us to collect RUM metrics from our users so that we can determine the best paths for our users to take. That has been very useful in providing the best user experience, and for responding to and recovering from downtime of our multiple CDNs."
"It massively speeds things up. Today, we allow developers to deploy services and have externally facing DNS scrapers that are created automatically without the addition of human intervention."
"We leverage two things from Managed DNS that we couldn't do with any other solution. One is their filter chain technology, which allows us to shift some of the intelligence we need for the traffic steering to the DNS. The second one is data sources, which enables us to manipulate multiple records simultaneously using NS1's internal message DOS. In our case, we are trying to direct the traffic in over 150,000 different NS1 records to an arbitrary set of repeating responses."
"One of the features that is non-standard and that is very useful is the filtered DNS. We have set up our external VPN, which is what all our employees connect through, to use this feature. It's geolocation-aware. In that way, for India we set it up so that these are the servers that should be supporting things, and in the UK these servers, in the U.S. these servers, and in Sweden these ones."
"The provisioning is great. They have an API service that is simple to use and very quick. The changes that we make are replicated worldwide in a matter of usually milliseconds, sometimes seconds. They are done very rapidly. That's something that's obviously priceless when we're dealing with things like DNS."
"During our testing phase, we encountered some issues with Active Directory and DNS reverse lookups."
"When you replace an appliance, there are many configuration steps, so adding zero-touch provisioning would be helpful. It can be quite tedious and time-consuming to replace a device if it fails or deploy a new one."
"While knowledge is a factor, both technical support and training need a significant overhaul."
"The solution does not export reports in a comprehensive format."
"BlueCat Integrity can improve by increasing the amount of updates it releases."
"The DNS and DHCP servers for guests are separated from the main organization. A lot of times, it doesn't allow you to choose a default IP space. When I log in to the GUI, it doesn't default to where I want it to be. So far, I haven't been able to find out how to change or specify that so that it defaults to a particular space, such as the main org. If I'm looking for the IP space for guests, I need to toggle and go to the guest site. Most of the time, I want the IP space for the org to be my main space, but it doesn't give me the ability to do that, or I haven't been able to find that over the last two years."
"The integration has room for improvement."
"One crucial area for development is IPv6 support."
"I would love to see improvement in the testing capabilities they provide. They have a simulate-filter feature so that you can simulate how your traffic would flow, based on their Filter Chains. I believe that was shut off for quite some time. Having that as a way to test our load-balanced CDN structure would be fantastic."
"I would like to see the UI updated to allow me to do finer searches. I would also like to have the ability to get reports that can sort based on various metrics. For example, I would like to be able to say, "Show me the top 10 records by total queries" in an easy-to-digest format."
"When we first deployed, we flipped the switch, and it didn't work as well as we expected. It wasn't a complete outage, but we had issues in some places with some customers. The NS1 team went out of their way to resolve it on Thanksgiving. We have a post about it on our blog. We called it "Black Thursday.""
"We use our client in our infrastructure to communicate with NS1. This client is a bit complex in the way that it is set up. NS1 has their own client solution that you can deploy into your platform to do this, but even that is a bit complex. So, I would like a very simple, thin, light API agent that we can deploy into our platform to communicate with NS1. That would be welcome."
"The Filter Chain simulation is really good in the UI, but it would be nice to have something similar in the API so that we could simulate and test things before we deploy them."
"The reporting metrics are great from an API standpoint, but it would be a little bit nicer if there was some type of dashboard around that. There should also be some type of reporting that's more executive-level focused."
"There could maybe be additional ways to manage traffic. There are no major improvements we're looking for. It's a very complete solution."
"We would really like them to become a DNS registrar."
BlueCat Integrity is ranked 5th in Managed DNS with 18 reviews while IBM NS1 Connect is ranked 7th in Managed DNS with 11 reviews. BlueCat Integrity is rated 8.8, while IBM NS1 Connect is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of BlueCat Integrity writes "It improves our security by providing a single source of IP address usage and contact information". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM NS1 Connect writes "Balances cost and functionality, speeds up provisioning, and reduces the DNS maintenance work drastically". BlueCat Integrity is most compared with Infoblox DDI, Infoblox IPAM, SolarWinds IPAM, Cloudflare DNS and Azure DNS, whereas IBM NS1 Connect is most compared with Cloudflare DNS, Akamai Edge DNS, Amazon Route 53, Neustar UltraDNS and Hurricane Electric Free DNS. See our BlueCat Integrity vs. IBM NS1 Connect report.
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