Dyn, Inc. () was an
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...
performance management
Performance management (PM) is the process of ensuring that a set of activities and outputs meets an organization's goals in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on the performance of a whole organization, a d ...
and web application security company, offering products to monitor, control, and optimize
online infrastructure, and also
domain registration
Domain registration is the process of acquiring a domain name from a domain name registrar.
History
In 1993 the U.S. Department of Commerce, in conjunction with several public and private entities, created InterNIC to maintain a central datab ...
services and
email
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...
products. The company was acquired by
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...
in 2016, and has operated as a global business unit of Oracle after the acquisition completed in 2017. Some Dyn services are planned to be retired by Oracle on May 31, 2023.
History
Dyn was created as a community-led student project by Tim Wilde, who then hired
Jeremy Hitchcock
Jeremy Hitchcock (born September 11, 1981) is co-founder and CEO of wifi management and IoT security startup, Minim (NASDAQ: MINM), based in Manchester, NH. Jeremy is also a Partner at New North Ventures, which invests in artificial intelligence, ...
, Tom Daly and Chris Reinhardt during their undergraduate studies at
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
''
, mottoeng = "Theory and Practice"
, established =
, former_name = Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science (1865-1886)
, type = Private research university
, endow ...
.
Eventually Wilde brought in Hitchcock and Daly as partners. Dyn enabled students to access lab computers and print documents remotely. The project then moved towards
Domain Name System
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned ...
(DNS) services. The first iteration was a free
dynamic DNS
Dynamic DNS (DDNS) is a method of automatically updating a name server in the Domain Name System (DNS), often in real time, with the active DDNS configuration of its configured hostnames, addresses or other information.
The term is used to desc ...
service known as DynDNS.
The project required $25,000 to stay open, and raised over $40,000.
The donation based model continued until 2002, and stopped with a launch of "donator-only" DNS services. Later, a premium service called the DynECT Managed DNS Platform became available in 2008, with the hiring of Kyle York, Gray Chynoweth and Cory von Wallenstein, as the business began to scale.
Pre-Acquisition (2011–2015)
2011: Dyn opened an office in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, and eventually moved its EMEA headquarters to
Brighton. In the same year, Dyn opened new headquarters in
Manchester, New Hampshire
Manchester is a city in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. It is the most populous city in New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusett ...
, United States.
October 2012: Dyn completed a
Series A round
A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exc ...
of
venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...
funding totaling
US$ 38 million from
North Bridge Venture Partners. Prior to the investment from North Bridge, the company had been self funded.
August 2013: Dyn launched its annual geek summer camp event, a
business conference
A convention, in the sense of a meeting, is a gathering of individuals who meet at an arranged place and time in order to discuss or engage in some common interest. The most common conventions are based upon industry, profession, and fand ...
for the Internet performance industry.
April 2014: Dyn announced the discontinuation of its free
hostname
In computer networking, a hostname (archaically nodename) is a label that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network and that is used to identify the device in various forms of electronic communication, such as the World Wide Web. Hos ...
services effective May 7.
September 2014: Dyn Internet Intelligence, a
SaaS
Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software.
SaaS is co ...
-based product was launched.
2016 attack
On October 21, 2016, Dyn's networks were
attacked three times with a
distributed denial-of-service attack
In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connect ...
, causing major sites including
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
,
Reddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news news aggregator, aggregation, Review site#Rating site, content rating, and Internet forum, discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") subm ...
,
GitHub
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, co ...
,
Amazon.com,
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...
,
Spotify
Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active us ...
,
RuneScape
''RuneScape'' is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by Jagex, released in January 2001. ''RuneScape'' was originally a browser game built with the Java programming language; it was la ...
,
Quora
Quora () is a social question-and-answer website based in Mountain View, California. It was founded on June 25, 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Users can collaborate by editing questions and commenting on answers that ...
, and Dyn's own website to become unreachable via the
URL
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...
(although most sites may have been available via IP address manually or through a maintained
hosts
file).
Acquisition by Oracle
May 2016: Dyn obtained further equity funding of US$50 million from Pamplona Capital Management;
[Dyn Secures $50 Million in Series B Equity Funding to Expand Global Internet Performance Management Market Opportunity, Announces New Platform Offering](_blank)
/ref> total funding was $100M. The company had scaled to approximately $100M in annual recurring revenue prior to its acquisition by Oracle. Dyn launched its platform for Internet performance management.
October 2016: Colin Doherty was appointed the company's CEO.
November 21, 2016: Dyn announced that it had agreed to be acquired by Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...
.
June 2018: Oracle released the Internet Intelligence Map, a free tool that provides data about worldwide Internet traffic and disruptions. The map uses the Internet Intelligence technology Oracle acquired from Dyn.
June 2019: Oracle announced Dyn's Managed and Standard DNS services would be shutting down in May 2020; this date was later extended to May 31, 2023. The email sent to Standard DNS customers informed them that the Standard DNS service would be replaced by the "enhanced, paid subscription version" hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Oracle Cloud is a cloud computing service offered by Oracle Corporation providing servers, storage, network, applications and services through a global network of Oracle Corporation managed data centers. The company allows the ...
(OCI). Several customers publicly shared that they would not be migrating to OCI. In addition, a large number of Dyn's Manchester, New Hampshire employees were laid off and the office space was put up for rent by the building owner. Many people were upset about this, including early Dyn adopters who were receiving "free for life" Standard DNS service, which was no longer being honored as of the transition to OCI DNS. "We truly appreciate your support throughout the years. While we are discontinuing the availability of services received at no-cost, you may be surprised by how affordable the DNS service is within OCI along with outstanding capabilities with this service."
Dyn Acquisitions
* Dyn acquired three companies during 2010: EveryDNS, EditDNS, and SendLabs.
* Dyn acquired these companies in the following years:
* September 2012- the SEO/SEM & Ecommerce Development parts of Incutio LTD. They also acquired long time DNS provider TZO.com.
* January 2, 2013- web performance monitoring company Verelo.
* May 13, 2013- mobile dashboard app startup Trendslide.
* December 23, 2013- ReadyStatus, a tool that notifies customers of planned and unplanned service interruptions.
* March 26, 2014- Nettica, a US-based managed DNS provider.
* May 20, 2014- Renesys, specialist in monitoring the Internet to provide data about cloud services, connectivity and potential performance issues.
*February 15, 2018- Oracle announced an agreement to acquire Zenedge, a Florida-based web application security company. The acquisition closed on March 5, 2018, and Zenedge became part of the Oracle Dyn Global Business Unit.
See also
* DNS hosting service
* Public recursive name servers
* Dynamic DNS
Dynamic DNS (DDNS) is a method of automatically updating a name server in the Domain Name System (DNS), often in real time, with the active DDNS configuration of its configured hostnames, addresses or other information.
The term is used to desc ...
* List of managed DNS providers
References
External links
Oracle Cloud DNS
Dyn Community Forum
Dyn's Help Center
Dyn Status Updates
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dyn
Alternative Internet DNS services
Dynamic DNS
Technology companies established in 1998
Internet technology companies of the United States
Companies based in Manchester, New Hampshire
Content-control software
Oracle acquisitions
2016 mergers and acquisitions