Domain Name Problems

I'm having a problem redirecting a domain name's DNS service registered
with Network Solutions.

After (futilely) attempting to update the domain name server fields from
the old DNS service we were using (zoneedit.com) to the new DNS/Hosting
company, I a little note in Network Solutions' help pages. It seem that
they will only allow pointing to name servers within the registered
domain, i.e. for mydomain.com I can only enter ns1.mydomain.com,
ns2.mydomain.com.

First, this isn't the way it was previously set up (zoneedit.com !=
mydomain.com).
Second, this doesn't seem to even work: If someone needs to resolve
www.mydomain.com, Network Solutions will point them to ns1.mydomain.com.
But, in order to resolve ns1.mydomain.com, they would be referred to
ns1.mydomain.com. This looks like a loop to me. Network Solutions
doesn't appear to take IP addresses, and, since I am using the DNS
service of my hosting company, I don't want to keep track if their name
server IPs anyway.

So, who doesn't have a clue here, me or Network Solutions?

--
Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't get even -- get odd! :¬þ

In article <42042CF2.2C5A987B@Hovnanian.com>,
"Paul Hovnanian P.E." <Paul@Hovnanian.com> wrote:

>After (futilely) attempting to update the domain name server fields from
>the old DNS service we were using (zoneedit.com) to the new DNS/Hosting
>company, I a little note in Network Solutions' help pages. It seem that
>they will only allow pointing to name servers within the registered
>domain, i.e. for mydomain.com I can only enter ns1.mydomain.com,
>ns2.mydomain.com.

I don't think this is true. Look at the name servers for
marathon-photos.com, for instance (one of my client's domains), and you
will see that neither name server name is in that domain, even though
the domain is registered with Network Solutions.

Hi Paul -

On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 18:18:26 -0800, "Paul Hovnanian P.E."
<Paul@Hovnanian.com> wrote:

>It seem that they will only allow pointing to name servers within
>the registered domain, i.e. for mydomain.com I can only enter
>ns1.mydomain.com, ns2.mydomain.com.
...
>So, who doesn't have a clue here, me or Network Solutions?

If what you are reporting is true, Network Solutions is totally
clueless. Since they have been totally clueless for years, that's no
real surprise.

Back in the bad old days they were the only registrar for .com, .net,
..org (and .edu?) so people had to put up with them. My first domain
was registered with them back then, because I had no choice. My
second domain was registered elsewhere, and I moved the first domain
away.

I STRONGLY recommend that you move your domain(s) to another
registrar.

--
Ken
http://www.ke9nr.net/

On Fri, 04 Feb 2005, Paul Hovnanian P.E. <Paul@Hovnanian.com> wrote:
> I'm having a problem redirecting a domain name's DNS service registered
> with Network Solutions.
>
> After (futilely) attempting to update the domain name server fields from
> the old DNS service we were using (zoneedit.com) to the new DNS/Hosting
> company, I a little note in Network Solutions' help pages. It seem that
> they will only allow pointing to name servers within the registered
> domain, i.e. for mydomain.com I can only enter ns1.mydomain.com,
> ns2.mydomain.com.

That makes no sense. Under Costmer Service, Domain Names, Set Up And
Manage Domain Names, Domain Name Server (DNS), it says "At least two
domain name servers (DNS) from the service provider that will be hosting
your domain name (you can have up to 13 domain name servers (DNS)". That
does not say that the nameserver names have to have "your" domain name
(which would not work unless someone else resolved the nameserver names).
Who are you attempting to use for DNS and are their nameservers (on static
IPs) properly configured for your domain?

> First, this isn't the way it was previously set up (zoneedit.com !=
> mydomain.com).
> Second, this doesn't seem to even work: If someone needs to resolve
> www.mydomain.com, Network Solutions will point them to ns1.mydomain.com.
> But, in order to resolve ns1.mydomain.com, they would be referred to
> ns1.mydomain.com. This looks like a loop to me. Network Solutions
> doesn't appear to take IP addresses, and, since I am using the DNS
> service of my hosting company, I don't want to keep track if their name
> server IPs anyway.

Apparently it is possible to have a nameserver in same domain, but not
sure how, unless that is registered in root servers, since host -t ns or
dig with ns switch for such nameservers do not return any nameservers:

> host -t ns no-ip.com
no-ip.com name server nf2.no-ip.com.
no-ip.com name server nf3.no-ip.com.
no-ip.com name server nf1.no-ip.com.
> host -t ns nf2.no-ip.com (note: no answer)
> host nf2.no-ip.com
nf2.no-ip.com has address 63.208.74.227

For virtual hosts, they usually do NOT have the same domain name:

> host -t ns berniesfloral.net
berniesfloral.net name server ns1.netfirms.com.
berniesfloral.net name server ns2.netfirms.com.

Have you polled the DNS hosting service's nameservers directly (by
including nameserver in nslookup, host, or dig command, depending upon
your OS) to see if they properly resolve your domain. They may have been
rejected if they do not properly resolve or do not resolve anything for
your domain yet.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Lawrence D¹Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:
> In article <42042CF2.2C5A987B@Hovnanian.com>,
> "Paul Hovnanian P.E." <Paul@Hovnanian.com> wrote:
>
>>After (futilely) attempting to update the domain name server fields
>>from the old DNS service we were using (zoneedit.com) to the new
>>DNS/Hosting company, I a little note in Network Solutions' help
>>pages. It seem that they will only allow pointing to name servers
>>within the registered domain, i.e. for mydomain.com I can only enter
>>ns1.mydomain.com, ns2.mydomain.com.

> I don't think this is true. Look at the name servers for
> marathon-photos.com, for instance (one of my client's domains), and
> you will see that neither name server name is in that domain, even
> though the domain is registered with Network Solutions.

What _could_ be the case is that if you want to request a nameserver
that isn't already in the .COM zone, the registrar might need (or
think they need) to go through some extra process to add that.

When I was registering a new .info domain, I wanted to use a
particular nameserver that had never previously been in use in the
info zone. (I have reasons to be able to know this sort of thing
;-).)

There's a little lag time in getting hosts into the zone. In the case
of .info, that normally takes between a few seconds and a few minutes.
Until recently, for .com, the equivalent latency was more like a day.

If the registrar waits for the nameserver to come back before letting
you use it, that could make the nameserver appear unusable for quite a
while. That might be a silly way to do it, but people do plenty of
silly things ;-).
--
let name="cbbrowne" and tld="gmail.com" in name ^ "@" ^ tld;;
http://linuxdatabases.info/info/spiritual.html
"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think 'I know, I'll use
regular expressions.' Now they have two problems."
-- Jamie Zawinski, on comp.lang.emacs

Ken wrote:
>
> Hi Paul -
>
> On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 18:18:26 -0800, "Paul Hovnanian P.E."
> <Paul@Hovnanian.com> wrote:
>
> >It seem that they will only allow pointing to name servers within
> >the registered domain, i.e. for mydomain.com I can only enter
> >ns1.mydomain.com, ns2.mydomain.com.
> ...
> >So, who doesn't have a clue here, me or Network Solutions?
>
> If what you are reporting is true, Network Solutions is totally
> clueless. Since they have been totally clueless for years, that's no
> real surprise.

Its looking worse all the time. They just replied to my customer service
request with a URL pointing to the same page I told them I was using.

> Back in the bad old days they were the only registrar for .com, .net,
> .org (and .edu?) so people had to put up with them. My first domain
> was registered with them back then, because I had no choice. My
> second domain was registered elsewhere, and I moved the first domain
> away.
>
> I STRONGLY recommend that you move your domain(s) to another
> registrar.

Probably a good idea. Its not my domain (belongs to a friend) but I'll
suggest this.

--
Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
Happily doing the work of 3 Men ... Moe, Larry & Curly

David Efflandt wrote:
>
> On Fri, 04 Feb 2005, Paul Hovnanian P.E. <Paul@Hovnanian.com> wrote:
> > I'm having a problem redirecting a domain name's DNS service registered
> > with Network Solutions.
> >
> > After (futilely) attempting to update the domain name server fields from
> > the old DNS service we were using (zoneedit.com) to the new DNS/Hosting
> > company, I a little note in Network Solutions' help pages. It seem that
> > they will only allow pointing to name servers within the registered
> > domain, i.e. for mydomain.com I can only enter ns1.mydomain.com,
> > ns2.mydomain.com.
>
> That makes no sense. Under Costmer Service, Domain Names, Set Up And
> Manage Domain Names, Domain Name Server (DNS), it says "At least two
> domain name servers (DNS) from the service provider that will be hosting
> your domain name (you can have up to 13 domain name servers (DNS)". That
> does not say that the nameserver names have to have "your" domain name
> (which would not work unless someone else resolved the nameserver names).

However, from their 'Account Manager User Guide' (might only be visible
once logged in to manage an account:

"You can only create new name servers that contain the domain name that
you manage. For instance, to create a new name servers for the domain
janesbagels.com, enter NS1.janesbagels.com and NS2.janesbagels.com."

And in fact, their system enforces this. Attempting to change
ns1.zoneedit.com to
ns1.infoconex.com gives me an error message.

> Who are you attempting to use for DNS and are their nameservers (on static
> IPs) properly configured for your domain?

An outfit called infoconex.com. Their name servers have static IPs and
are configured properly for my domain (verified with nslookup using
their name server).

> > First, this isn't the way it was previously set up (zoneedit.com !=
> > mydomain.com).
> > Second, this doesn't seem to even work: If someone needs to resolve
> > www.mydomain.com, Network Solutions will point them to ns1.mydomain.com.
> > But, in order to resolve ns1.mydomain.com, they would be referred to
> > ns1.mydomain.com. This looks like a loop to me. Network Solutions
> > doesn't appear to take IP addresses, and, since I am using the DNS
> > service of my hosting company, I don't want to keep track if their name
> > server IPs anyway.
>
> Apparently it is possible to have a nameserver in same domain, but not
> sure how, unless that is registered in root servers, since host -t ns or
> dig with ns switch for such nameservers do not return any nameservers:

It is possible, but I'd rather not do it. Since the hosting company has
their own machines, with their own DNS names, I'd rather use those
names. I did spend some time poking around the Network Solutions system
and figured out how to set IP addresses for DNS servers. Then, I made up
my own names (ns1.mydomain.com, etc.) pointing to the IPs of
infoconex.com. But if anyone does a reverse lookup, or even a name
lookup on these, it might break things, or at least look like someone
was hacking this domain name (for other than altruistic reasons).

> > host -t ns no-ip.com
> no-ip.com name server nf2.no-ip.com.
> no-ip.com name server nf3.no-ip.com.
> no-ip.com name server nf1.no-ip.com.
> > host -t ns nf2.no-ip.com (note: no answer)
> > host nf2.no-ip.com
> nf2.no-ip.com has address 63.208.74.227
>
> For virtual hosts, they usually do NOT have the same domain name:
>
> > host -t ns berniesfloral.net
> berniesfloral.net name server ns1.netfirms.com.
> berniesfloral.net name server ns2.netfirms.com.
>
> Have you polled the DNS hosting service's nameservers directly (by
> including nameserver in nslookup, host, or dig command, depending upon
> your OS) to see if they properly resolve your domain. They may have been
> rejected if they do not properly resolve or do not resolve anything for
> your domain yet.

Yes. They have been set up for some time now. Its getting Network
Solutions straightened out that is taking time.

One thing that I'm thinking is that Network Solutions seems to be making
the use of anything other than their own DNS service and web site
hosting very difficult to use. That would be a shame, since their
service may be OK for little people, but once someone needs a custom
configuration, like co-located hosts, they'll have to move their name
registration elsewhere. Not a good business plan, being the supplier
that successful businesses all have to drop.

--
Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
Ask me about my vow of silence.