Ok,. so if you are like I am, and manage a ton of servers, domains, and accounts for clients’ then this is important information for you.
The new Microsoft Office 365 product is a cloud based solution for office applications, including email. Simple enough, we’ve all used MS Office for years, what could be different. For one, they want to add their server in the steps it takes to get from typing your domain name to it being translated to the folder on your server.
How things work now,… for example let’s assume you have a dedicated server with a hosting company like liquidweb.com. You can either use their DNS server, or setup your own,. I typically setup my own name servers, so for this example lets use my name servers ns1.mynameserver.com and ns2.mynameserver.com.
When a user enters www.mydomain.com their browser asks the “internet” for a connection to that domain name,. but the internet doesn’t use domains to communicate it uses IP addresses, and other methods. So Step 1) Interpret mydomain.com by asking,. and you get a response of 67.x.x.x.9 ok,. great,. from there you are directed to the content you are looking for. Obviously this is a seamless event that just happens.
Microsoft has a new five step setup process, and on step 5 it asks you to point your domain name to their name servers. Well, this is what got my attention. When a client asks me to point his domain at new nameservers I know that something is up.
So, after some digging, I’ve found that Step 5 is indeed to set the name servers for your domain to their microsoft 365 servers… which would break your domain. Then I poked around some more and found that step 2 was to give them your domains IP address,. They setup an A Record and CNAME on their servers. So that in Step 5 you set it to use their servers.
What does this mean? It means that they are adding themselves in the steps between a client typing your domain name and being delivered to your website.
1) Consumer Types www.yourdomain.com in the browser
2) Godaddy,. or whomever tells their browser that it resides on microsoft.com server
3) Microsoft server says oh, that isn’t here, it’s on this server,. and points to your server,.
4) Client is provided with your site,.
Can you think of any reasons why Microsoft would want to control your DNS, or to have you make a stop over on the path between your customers and your domain? I can think of a bunch,. like getting you blocked on google,. while giving you a bump on bing.
