BlueCat Integrity vs IBM NS1 Connect comparison

BlueCat Integrity

Read 19 BlueCat Integrity reviews

1,069 Views
502 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM NS1 Connect

Read 11 IBM NS1 Connect reviews

2,975 Views
1,382 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

BlueCat Integrity

IBM NS1 Connect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

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.

To learn more, read our detailed BlueCat Integrity vs. IBM NS1 Connect Report (Updated: May 2024).

Buyer's Guide

BlueCat Integrity vs. IBM NS1 Connect

May 2024

Download the complete report

Helped 787,817 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

BlueCat Integrity

Ranking in Managed DNS

5th

Average Rating

8.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (2nd), DDI (2nd)

IBM NS1 Connect

Ranking in Managed DNS

7th

Average Rating

9.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2024, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of BlueCat Integrity is 2.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM NS1 Connect is 1.6%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed DNS

Unique Categories:

IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools

19.7%

DDI

33.3%

No other categories found

Featured Reviews

Srinivasan-V

DDI Engineer at TWO95 International, Inc

May 20, 2024

Helps reduce downtime, saves us time, and is user-friendly

The most effective features for IP management are log reviews and configuration management. BlueCat Integrity is easy to use but it can be time-consuming. It has improved our troubleshooting. We can go to the server and see the logs. BlueCat Integrity has helped reduce downtime andhas saved 50 percent of our time. It has streamlined our IT team's workflow, freeing up valuable time for other projects. The intuitive user interface simplifies the process of provisioning IP addresses to customers. We recommend the BlueCat automation to our customers because it saves almost 50 percent of our time. Through the self-service portal, our customers can complete their requests themselves. BlueCat Integrity helped improve network stability. The professional DNS and support service helps integrate BlueCat Integrity.

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Michael Wills

Senior Network Systems Engineer at McKesson

Jun 8, 2022

Balances cost and functionality, speeds up provisioning, and reduces the DNS maintenance work drastically

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. It is great as an API-first platform for DNS and application traffic management. It is very simple to use. It allows us to rapidly provision and deprovision things. We are all around happy with the solution. From a metrics standpoint, the solution that we came from had no metrics. So, it has been great. Their service team is excellent in taking the time to provide reports for both growth and strategic planning. It has been great.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"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."

"Adaptive DNS's best feature is DDoS protection, which stops malware and network security attacks."

"The most significant advantage of BlueCat is its foundation on open-source software, specifically BIND and ISC DHCP."

"This inherent stability, derived from its Linux-based architecture, provides a well-established and reliable platform."

"DNS aliases, which we use extensively in our applications are a valuable feature."

"The solution includes automatic management of segments."

"One of the key features enabling us to operate at our current scale is robust automation."

"It's a critical infrastructure piece. This is where all the IPs are named for the whole organization. It's a big deal. It has all the features related to DNS and DHCP. It's pretty amazing."

More BlueCat Integrity pros

"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."

"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 fact that it's an API-first platform for DNS and application traffic management is one of the reasons we looked into NS1. We use it for a lot of automation and metrics gathering and it's been great."

"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."

"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."

"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 find that the low latency access to DNS queries has a direct effect on the customer experience. Visiting a site, whether it's an AdTech-based solution or marketing tech, the fact that whatever we're rendering on a page can be rendered better than the industry standard, in terms of time, ensures a better user experience."

More IBM NS1 Connect pros

Cons

"The solution does not export reports in a comprehensive format."

"While knowledge is a factor, both technical support and training need a significant overhaul."

"One crucial area for development is IPv6 support."

"During our testing phase, we encountered some issues with Active Directory and DNS reverse lookups."

"The technical support is slow and has room for improvement."

"The IPAM dashboard could be enhanced to display more information and provide data analysis features."

"I would like the GUI to be similar to AWS and Azure, where we can simply click on an item to expand it and see all the information on one page, without having to click to the next page."

"While the product is IPAM, DNS, and DHCP, it does provide NTP functionality, but one of the things that they have yet to correct or catch up with is NTP authentication. There are new standards being pushed out and they are lagging a little bit in supporting them."

More BlueCat Integrity cons

"There could maybe be additional ways to manage traffic. There are no major improvements we're looking for. It's a very complete solution."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We care about monitoring and telemetry work, and NS1 provides a pretty good system for monitoring. We can monitor our endpoints and points of presence around the world. If there are any issues, we can easily remove them from our network, but this area needs some improvement because it is not always reliable in NS1. In the past, we had a number of false-positive cases when the monitoring system told us about some problems in our infrastructure that were not true. NS1 is improving the system, and we are constantly talking about this with them. I know that they are releasing a new version of their monitoring system, which is really important for us, but this is a different area where we would expect them to improve."

"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."

"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."

More IBM NS1 Connect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to other solutions, BlueCat Integrity offers a competitive price."

"They're competitive. The way they run their model is good. Could it stand some tweaking? Sure. There are some items there. One of the things I looked at in the recent past was their container solutions. You have to pay for licensing to use their containerized platform, but the licensing doesn't include the container licensing itself. I'd love to be able to have one big package per se."

"BlueCat Integrity meets our expectations and aligns with our budget forecast."

"While BlueCat falls on the expensive side, its exceptional customer service and consistent quality justify the cost."

"Adaptive DNS's price depends on your network ranges, the services you want, and the level of support you require."

"BlueCat Integrity is more cost-effective than Infoblox."

"I am not sure about the exact pricing, but I believe their cost is lower compared to Infoblox."

"Overall, it's a decent price for the product. There are other vendors that have support models and costs that are, sometimes, double what Bluecat charges."

More BlueCat Integrity pricing and cost advice

"Everything can always be cheaper, but as it is today the pricing is fair."

"We pay about $30,000 a month. We used to pay about $20,000 with Dyn every month, for lower volume than we're doing right now, but it had none of the features that we have available with NS1, so it was worth it for us. It seems competitive for us, given that we're doing 4.5 billion requests."

"From a cost standpoint, it's certainly not the most expensive out there, and it's also not the cheapest, but it does well to balance the cost and the functionality/reliability."

"NS1's pricing is much more aggressive than its competitors in the market and you get more value out of what you pay for it."

"The cost of this product is one of the reasons that we chose it."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

14%

University

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BlueCat Adaptive DNS?

This inherent stability, derived from its Linux-based architecture, provides a well-established and reliable platform.

See all answers

What needs improvement with BlueCat Adaptive DNS?

BlueCat Integrity could benefit from several improvements. First, faster log processing would be beneficial. Ideally, the system would adopt a similar approach to BlueCat Edge for improved efficien...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for BlueCat Adaptive DNS?

Our DDI environment is managed by BlueCat Integrity, a unified platform for our DNS, DHCP, and IP address management.

See all answers

What do you like most about NS1 Managed DNS?

For starters, Managed DNS from NS1 is an easy way to get the job done. Whether you're a novice or a pro, Managed DNS Providers provide all of the tools necessary for efficient and reliable DNS mana...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NS1 Managed DNS?

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 e...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for NS1 Managed DNS?

We basically use their NS1 Managed DNS service as a secondary DNS server. So essentially they front end all of the McKesson DNS queries around the world. It is a SaaS solution. So, we are using its...

See all answers

Comparisons

Infoblox DDI vs BlueCat Integrity

Compared 35% of the time

Infoblox IPAM vs BlueCat Integrity

Compared 26% of the time

SolarWinds IPAM vs BlueCat Integrity

Compared 12% of the time

Cloudflare DNS vs BlueCat Integrity

Compared 12% of the time

Azure DNS vs BlueCat Integrity

Compared 6% of the time

More BlueCat Integrity Competitors

Cloudflare DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 33% of the time

Akamai Edge DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 29% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 14% of the time

Neustar UltraDNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 9% of the time

Hurricane Electric Free DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM NS1 Connect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

BlueCat Integrity

June 2024

Download BlueCat Integrity product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM NS1 Connect

June 2024

Download IBM NS1 Connect product report

Also Known As

BlueCat Adaptive DNS, BlueCat Automation Manager, BlueCat DDI

NS1 Managed DNS, NS1

Learn More

BlueCat

IBM

Overview

BlueCat Integrity is a comprehensive DNS security solution that provides visibility and control over all DNS traffic on your network. It offers real-time threat detection and response, as well as policy enforcement to ensure compliance with security standards. With its advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, Integrity enables you to identify and mitigate security risks before they can cause damage. It also integrates with other security tools to provide a complete security ecosystem. Whether you're a small business or a large enterprise, BlueCat Integrity can help you protect your network from DNS-based attacks and ensure the integrity of your DNS infrastructure.

IBM® NS1 Connect is a managed service for authoritative DNS and traffic steering that improves application performance and network resilience.

Revenue-generating applications require authoritative DNS resolution to keep critical applications and websites online. Unless your DNS infrastructure is always-on and resilient, network reliability and user experience will suffer.

IBM NS1 Connect provides fast, secure connections to users anywhere in the world with premium DNS and advanced, customizable traffic steering. NS1 Connect’s always-on, API-first architecture enables your IT teams to more efficiently monitor networks, deploy changes and conduct routine maintenance.

For enterprises looking to further optimize DNS performance, IBM NS1 Connect offers rich DNS data analytics to streamline the identification of the root cause of anomalies within traffic.

IBM NS1 Connect Features

Global anycast DNS network: Enjoy fast connections to consumers around the globe through an anycast network with 26 points of presence (PoPs).

100% uptime SLA on DNS resolution: Maximize uptime and revenue generation with resilient, always-on, authoritative DNS.

API-first architecture: Integrate and automate workflows with NS1 Connect's well-documented API.

Real-time user monitoring-based traffic steering: Use real-time intelligence on network performance and availability to
direct DNS connections to the best available application resource.

Built-in resilience: Add a single-tenant, redundant DNS layer and manage it from the same portal as your primary DNS.

Managed DNS for China: Improve performance for the Chinese mainland by segmenting traffic with NS1 Connect’s Managed DNS for China.

DNS insights: Get a better understanding of DNS traffic patterns by mining your DNS data to identify security issues, misconfigurations and performance issues.

DDoS protection: Cap your query-based spending with protection against unexpected surges in traffic from distributed denial-of-service attacks.

Uptime monitor: Quickly identify issues and automatically adjust DNS traffic steering configurations with native health check alerts.

DevOps tool integrations: Preconfigured integrations with leading DevOps tools including Ansible and Terraform to help automate routine maintenance, manage data sources and feeds.

Sample Customers

Computer Sciences Corporation

Avast Software, Bloomberg L.P., BBC, Carfax, CNBC LLC, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Disney Streaming, Dropbox, EBAY Inc, Gannett Media Corp, Salesforce, Wayfair, Workday

Buyer's Guide

BlueCat Integrity vs. IBM NS1 Connect

May 2024

Free Report: BlueCat Integrity vs. IBM NS1 Connect

Find out what your peers are saying about BlueCat Integrity vs. IBM NS1 Connect and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.

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