It is crucial for an IPTV provider not to use public free domain services, and I can give you hundreds of reasons for that. You must register your own for IPTV purposes. In this article, we will see why it is so important to use your paid domain and how you may benefit from this.
What is a Domain address?
The domain is the web address that you put into the browser address bar to visit a website – same as iptvresellerhub.com . In online world, we find websites and servers using a domain. Imagine you want to give your home address to a friend so they can visit your place. Same thing applies to websites, that you need their domain address to visit them.
The concept of using your own domain in IPTV
When you run an IPTV business, it’s vital to take control of as many factors as you can. The domain is one of those things. When you own it, there are various risks that you dodge and many benefits to favor from.
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Domain of your IPTV brand helps clients remembering you
When you register your own domain and use it for IPTV service, customers who get a free trial or paid service from you will never forget your name. This will serve as a reminder and will always keep you in front of their eyes, whereas if you use one of those free public addresses, no one will ever recognize you in the future.
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No sudden take downs
Most of these free domain services have strict policy against IPTV and the moment they see anyone uses their service for this purposes, they will delete, suspend and take it down. However, if you use your own, this may never happen especially if you use off-shore domain registrars which will be discussed in details in a little bit.
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Full control over sub-domain and records of your IPTV domain
A domain has various extensions and tools. One of them is sub-domain. For instance if iptvresellerhub.com is our main domain, s1.iptvresellerhub.com would be the sub-domain. There are other things you can utilize which will be explained soon. You can do the same, point the main address to your website, if you want of course, and the sub-address to your panel.
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Easy migration from one provider to another
I will make an example about our service, not afraid 🙂 let’s say we fail to satisfy your needs as a provider. You may decide to move to another service. If you have your own domain linked to your panel, you can simply change the IP address behind that and point it to your new provider. After that, import your back up of accounts to the new portal and you will be good to go. Clients wont even notice any downtimes.
As you can see, having your own IPTV domain is too beneficial to miss on. Reminding you again, you need every single factor to your favor to become a successful seller.
Best domain registrars for IPTV
You can not just buy your domain for IPTV from any company. We have already mentioned the fact that many companies will take down your service if they find out you are using their services for such purposes. Domain names are no different. For this reason, you need a registrar who is less aggressive or off-shore. Below we have listed some of the domain registrars which we have personally tested throughout the years and never had issues with.
- gandi.net
I have purchases tens of different domains from this company, all for CCCam and IPTV purposes, never had an issue. Their prices are usually good. Their domain management panel is also very easy to get used to. Gandi.net has never given IPTV users any problems as long as they stayed low profile. One downside is recently they have removed the support for Crypto payments if you prefer anonymous payment methods.
- Joker.com
Another registrar at which you can easily get your domain for IPTV with peace of mind is Joker.com . They have given me a good experience for many years. I did refer many users to them as well, no one complained. Prices are reasonable and the propagation happens in short period of time. Various payment methods including Cryptocurrency are available.
- namecheap.com
The thing that you will instantly love about namecheap.com is that little hedgehog, coolest little thing ever. But it’s not just that! their prices and services are great as well. Various payment gateways available including Crypto. I personally used them for 5 years, no issues at all.
There are all ICCAN-compliant companies and if they receive a critical notice, they may act on your case but as long as you keep it low-profile, you will never face any issues. I have shared my own experience here and running multiple popular websites and forums launched in the past 10 years using these brands who have never given me any issues.
How is your IPTV domain linked to your panel?
Once you have obtained your domain in the registrar panel, it will be available for configuration, which is very easy – don’t let the task scare you, it’s super easy. You can simply contact your IPTV provider to link the desired address to the panel.
Here at iptvresellerhub.com , we do this swiftly and guide our clients through the process. Simply contact us to provide you with our core server IP address. You will point your domain, or sub-domain if you prefer, to that IP address and after a few hours all will be ready to go. There is another thing worth mentioning and thats the fact that you can also do the same for your subresellers. This feature is explained below.
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Adding domain to your subreseller accounts on IPTV panel
No matter which IPTV Reseller Panel you use, almost all of them enable you to add domain to the retailers accounts. They simply need to purchase an address for themselves and send you the details. After that, you will provide them with the IP address of your provider’s core server IP and that’s it. We have extensively talked about managing an IPTV panel in other blog posts but to clarify this specific task, I will make a short example from our service.
Let’s say you are trying to add a new retailer to your panel. From the dashboard, click Add subreseller.
The registration form has a field called DNS. That’s where your retailer domain/sub-domain should go into. Finally click Save. Now provide them with the IP address that you have received from us or your own Provider. They should apply this on their panel and few hours later it will be pointing properly.
By doing this, your retailer will also have their own DNS (domain) address showing on the streaming lines that they extract from the IPTV panel.
How to secure an IPTV domain by DNS masking?
I keep saying that you need to utilize all the available tools out there to your favor in order to provide the best possible IPTV service. One of these tools is DNS masking, which will hide the IP address behind the domain/DNS that is paired to your panel. One of the biggest names who offer such service is called Cloudflare. Using them, is beneficial in various ways:
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Hiding the IP address behind the domain
When you add your Domain/DNS to the Cloudflare service, it can be masked by their secure network and no one can ever find out the real IP address behind it. This benefits both you and your IPTV provider. If anyone tries to ping the address, they will only see proxy servers.
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Best possible global network routing and reachability
When users go through a domain of IPTV protected by Cloudflare, their internet connection resolve the IP address using Globally Interconnected Network. Imagine your DNS is not mask and you are using the normal pointing. If the IPTV core server is located in the Netherlands, any client from any part of the world have to connect to the Netherlands, where that server is hosted basically. However, if the domain is masked by Cloudflare, clients connect to the nearest Datacenter of this company, of which they have loads around the world, and the initial routing between the main server and the client will happen in less than 5 milliseconds.
The idea is, when your domain is not masked, this is how they get connected to your main server:
Client > IPTV core server > The load balancer where the stream is located
In the “Client > IPTV core server” part, the delay between the client and core server gets worse when they are connecting from distant network locations, imagine a client in Malaysia tries to connect to a server hosted in Amsterdam.
But if they go through a masked domain:
Client > Entering Nearest Cloudflare Datacenter to the Client > Exiting the Nearest Cloudflare Datacenter to the IPTV Core Server > IPTV core server > The load balancer where the stream is located
The entering and exiting inside CF network will happen through the ultra fast global fiber optic lines.
Although this does not affect the speed of streaming , it will be effective in terms of channel zapping, EPG load and channel list propagation.
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Full domain management panel functions with fastest propagation
All registrar companies provide their clients with every possible tool to manage their domains. It’s the matter of competition between these companies so if a service going to act as a medium in between, it must provide all those features plus more tools, shiny enough to attract attentions. Well, Cloudflare has done that very well in the past few years. They provide a broad range of features along with the domain administration panel. When you make changes to your addresses, they take effect in the shortest possible time, which is called Propagation.
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Fending off various attacks, threats and bots
CF provides various security features. From free SSL, spam and bot protection, to applying rules on incoming traffic. For instance, you can block certain countries from reaching your service.
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Best of all, it’s free
Cloudflare can provide all those features in their free plan forever although limited to certain level. Full potential is unlocked through paid plans, But the free one will do the job for your IPTV purpose.
Just like I reminded you before regarding domain registrars, CF will also act on abuse reports. So it is advised to keep it low profile.
How to use Cloudflare for IPTV purposes?
To make this article a practical and detailed guide, I will walk with you through this process so you understand the whole concept of using CF.
Open cloudflare.com and from the top right side, click Sign UP. If you are doing this on small-screen devices like smart phones, use the Hamburger Option on the top right side to reach the menu. You will need to enter your email address and choose a password, typical registration. Once done, make sure to check your inbox and verify your email.
Choose the Free Plan. Thats the only thing you need for IPTV usage. All the required features are available in this one and no need to pay for this.
Put your domain address in the designated field above, leave the DNS Scan on the recommended choice and click Continue.
Once again, it is needed to select the Free Plan. Please scroll down a little until you find it, make sure it is highlighted with a blue rectangle box and then click Continue.
After a few seconds the following page should pop up. This is a list of records that Cloudflare has scanned on your domain which are currently added. Nothing needs to be done here, yet. Click Continue.
This is the most important part during activation. It will provide you 2 name servers of their own. These should be added to your panel at the registrar that you have your domain hosted with. The name servers that you will be given might be different from the ones above. You can simply click on “Click to Copy” next to each NS to have it saved on the clipboard.
Keep this page open and now let’s head over to the domain panel.
Open the registrar panel where you have purchased your name address, find your domain settings and open that section. The above picture is from my own panel at namecheap. In front of the domain there is a Manage button and thats where I need to go.
In the NAMESERVERS section, I can find Custom DNS. Your company might have a different layout but they are all the same.
As you can see, I have copied and pasted CF nameservers in the provided fields and now I click the green tick. We’re done here. We should now go back to Cloudflare panel.
Back on CF, click Continue to finalize the activation. After this step, you need to wait for Cloudflare to email you and confirm the activation of your domain. Once that email is received, you can proceed with the next step.
You can log into your dashboard and it will look like this, your domain(s) are listed and Status is shown as Active. Click on it.
From the left column, click DNS. This is where the DNS records and all the related tools are.
There is an Add Record button on top of the available record table on this page, click that.
These settings and inputs will determine the proper functionality of the DNS settings and IPTV domain, therefore we need to have a little closer look:
1-For the IPTV purposes, always use the record type A – it is also called A-Record.
2-This is the name of the sub-domain. To clarify this, we are right now inside iptvreselelrhub.com dashboard. So if I want to create s1.iptvresellerhub.com the value which should be inserted in the Name field is “s1”. You can add whatever you want it to be.
3-This is where the IPTV Core Server IP address is inserted. Your provider should give this to you. If you are our IPTV retailer, get in touch and ask for it.
4-Proxy Status must be enabled, or as CF states Proxied, unless your provider advises differently.
5-You can add a note for future references if you want. Usually useful when you have multiple records.
Now click Save to proceed and submit the details.
You can now see that the record I have submitted for a sub-domain is added. All I need to do is to wait 2 to 24 hours and it should be fully propagated. Then s1.iptvresellerhub.com can be given to clients to connect to the service. The IP address shown above is protected and no one will ever know the main server IP address since the Status is Proxied. People, if they try to find out about it, will only see Cloudflare’s IPs.
Summary
Any IPTV provider must opt for their own paid domain name instead of using freenoms available online. It will let you be in charge of it as well as empowering you to have various DNS addresses under the same address for various reasons. There are lot’s of easy-going registrars to purchase your address from. You can also go for off-shore companies to have no worries about future complications. Masking your DNS is another thing you should consider not only to hide the main server IP address, but to enable your clients reach the main database as fast as possible wherever they are in the world.
Let’s answer some Frequently Asked Questions about this topic
Is it wise to use a free domain service for my IPTV purposes?
The answer is a big NO. Free name services are unstable and will suspend your access to the address with one single report or review. Their panels are usually very limited in terms of features and functionality. On the other hand, a responsible IPTV provider should never leave the fate of their service to the hands of a cheap free service.
Which company should I choose to register my domain for IPTV?
These companies are called registrars. You can pick the ones we discussed earlier in this article. You can also go for those who operate under off-shore rules, basically more lenient towards bending rules and may never act on you in case of receiving certain complaints. One thing is for sure! companies like name.com and Godaddy must be avoided at all costs.
Is it necessary to mask my DNS?
It’s not necessary, many IPTV service do not do that. However, it is the matter of mindset, how great you want to be as a provider. If you use a service like Cloudflare and proxy your dns, no matter where in the world, your clients will make the initial connection to your service in the fastest way possible. The connection path has been explained above. There are other companies available including Fastly which also have a free plan.
Does masking my IPTV domain help me bypass ISP Blocks?
No, absolutely not, thats a completely different subject. You see, when you Proxy your domain, it only protects the Main Server address. When a client tries to play a stream, they first reach your core server and after that they are redirected to the lower-hand server(s) on which the stream(s) is/are placed or load-balanced. The block is applied to those load-balancers not the main server.