Domain Name Registrar vs. Webcountry Hosting...Who do I believe?
Mitchell Krog
Hi Mathias
Well .. the domain is definately unpaid as per Uniforum's records.
and the owner is Steven Collen. If you have paid, did you fax the
deposit slip to Uniforum ???
To answer your other question.
Yes ... I would lodge a complaint against WebCountry and get your money
back or just refuse to pay any further until they can correctly setup
their DNS. The fact that they host 11,000+ sites means diddly squat.
The registrar Uniforum is not at fault here at all .. I register
hundreds of domains with them a year and they DO correctly check
for correct delegation of a zone. If a zone fails the Uniforum test
it will fail just about any other test ... you can bank on this.
One fact that Webcountry should advertise is that they know S**T about DNS.
Yes ... they have given you two Nameservers but they both point
to one machine ... which no registrar will accept anymore these
days ... there must physically be two DNS servers (seperate machines)
Also the actual zone files are NOT setup correctly either.
These guys with their 11,000+ sites hosted .....mmmmm ... 11,000 sites
all running off a crooked DNS ??? does not sound very believable to me at
all .... you will probably find that have a hundred clients hosting
with them and 10,900 sites of their own ... grin :)
Many International ISP's have this claim that "we have XXXXX sites" that
type of info means nothing to nobody ... what they always fail to mention
is "who" they host. I had major fights with three International ISP's
with primarily DNS related issue similar to yours and other problems.
And notice something else ... they all claim that they are the largest
..... what bull.
I did eventually get my money back with apology letters after several
months of hate mail between us and I was also tied into contracts.
So ... there is a way out.
My advice ... get rid of them, and get another ISP.
The to be "very" aware of:
IceStorm - http://www.icestorm.com
WebAxxs - http://www.webaxxs.net
OLM - http://www.olm.net
Icestorm - never answer any support requests, and when
they do, they don't actually answer your questtion.
They talk in circles.
Webaxxs and OLM are the same company and they too
never bother fixing anything or taking the blame
for anything. They also talk in circles so you never
actually get an answer to your question.
A company I did use for a while although not for DNS
was Communitech - http://www.communitech.net and they
are a pretty good crowd to deal with. When I did cancel
with Communitech for no other reason besides the fact that
I was moving my sites to my own servers, they promptly
accepted my cancellation .... unlike the others who
ignore cancellation requests so that they can continue
billing the hell out of you.
Another good place to look for hosts is
http://www.hostindex.com
I hope you get sorted out.
Regards
Mitch
-----Original Message-----
From: bind-use...@isc.org [mailto:bind-use...@isc.org]On
Behalf Of Mathias Körber
Sent: 10 November 2000 18:36
To: CT_SAF; comp-protoc...@uunet.uu.net
Subject: RE: Domain Name Registrar vs. Webcountry Hosting...Who do I
believe?
I did not follow this thread, but see below!
> Okay, so it seems that Webcountry still refuse to play ball and I'm =
locked
> into a 12-month pre-paid contract. They advertise via their site that =
they
> support all foreign domain names and they instruct their clients to =
use
> server.webcountry.net and ns2.webcountry.net as the nameservers but =
using
> nslookup both nameservers respond that the nameserver delegated=20
> for my zone
> is in fact www.webcountry.net .
>=20
> nslookup -q=3Dall internethosting.co.za server.webcountry.net
> nslookup -q=3Dall internethosting.co.za ns2.webcountry.net
Hmm. If I look up the NS records for internethosting.co.za, I get:
;; ANSWER SECTION:
internethosting.co.za. 23h59m21s IN CNAME infosite.co.za.
infosite.co.za. 1D IN NS ns2.surgeons.co.za.
infosite.co.za. 1D IN NS ns1.surgeons.co.za.
the ZA whois page bears this out, but shows the domain as unpaid
and w/o NS records:
http://co.za/cgi-bin/whois.sh?Domain=3Dinternethosting.co.za
There is no mentioning of webcountry etc.
Looks to me that the 'ownership' of this domain is in question
(unless I missed something else before)
>=20
> I have brought this to Webcountry's attention, and their response was
> basically the following:
>=20
> * that's the way we do it
> * if it's good enough for 11 000+ clients, it will have to be good =
enough
> for you.
> * our nameservers are set up to ICANN specifications
> * tell your domain name registrar to delegate the domain manually
>=20
> Both server.webcountry.net and ns2.webcountry.net respond with
> www.webcountry.net as the nameserver for my domain.
>=20
> 1. Does this mean that Webcountry has supplied me with two=20
> nameservers that
> are the same physical machine?
>=20
> 2. Must hosting companies supply two nameservers as a question of=20
> ethics or
> law? May they reside on the same physical machine?
>=20
> 3. Can I get a free secondary nameserver for the site? Should I even
> consider this?
>=20
> 4. Webcountry is registered with the Better Business Bereau in the US. =
Are
> these grounds enough to register a complaint and demand a refund?
>=20
> Unfortunately, I am locked into a 12-month pre-paid contract so I =
really
> need to resolve this. The fact is that this has taken 9 days so far =
and
> Webcountry hasn't acknowledged that there is a problem on their=20
> side. I show
> them snlookup results and their attitude is like, "and so?". If they =
were
> prepared to fix this up on their side I could overlook everything, but =
it
> seems that they just couldn't care less.
>=20
> Grant
>=20
>=20
> Bill Manning wrote in message <2000110917...@zed.isi.edu>...
> >
> >% Both sides are just hurling technical gobbledygook at me and=20
> blaming each
> >% other. Has anyone got technical experience in this? Who do I=20
> believe? Any
> >% advice appreciated...
> >%
> >% thanx
> >%
> >% Grant
> >
> > For the domains I manage, I use the old format of ensuring
> > the servers for the requested delegation are authoritative
> > -prior- to making the delegation. This ensures a reduction
> > in the number of lame delegations. Folks in the domain
> > hosting biz tend to be driven by fees for domains hosted,
> > and there is less care that a delegation actually works.
> >
> > Potentially some useful advice:
> >
> > %dig <yourdomainhere> ns @<each one of the servers for the =
delegation>
> >
> > will show if each of them is set up properly.
> >
> > http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-185.html#chapter5
> >
> >Prior to the delegation of domain name zones (e.g. "cat.edu"), the =
person
> or
> >organisation to whom authority over the zone is delegated agrees=20
> to provide
> >some key services necessary to support domain names extending from =
the
> zone.
> >
> >When a ... zone is delegated ..., care should of course be taken in =
the
> proper
> >construction of the DNS configuration files for the zone. Known =
pitfalls
> and
> >some useful tips for avoiding them can be found in (RFC 1912 =
[Barr96a]).
> >
> >For each zone, a secondary server must be set up to improve the=20
> reliability
> of
> >the database under adverse conditions. To increase the=20
> probability that the
> >secondary server can be reached if the primary server becomes=20
> unavailable,
> the
> >secondary server is required to be on a subnet physically separated =
from
> the
> >primary server.
> >
> >
> >--
> >--bill
> >
> >
> >
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20
Mathias Körber
> Hi Mathias
>=20
> Well .. the domain is definately unpaid as per Uniforum's records.
> and the owner is Steven Collen. If you have paid, did you fax the
> deposit slip to Uniforum ???
Not me, you mean CT_SAF! I was answering him. But your points are well =
taken.
>=20
> To answer your other question.
> Yes ... I would lodge a complaint against WebCountry and get your =
money
> back or just refuse to pay any further until they can correctly setup
> their DNS. The fact that they host 11,000+ sites means diddly squat.
I totally agree.
>=20
> The registrar Uniforum is not at fault here at all .. I register
> hundreds of domains with them a year and they DO correctly check
> for correct delegation of a zone. If a zone fails the Uniforum test
> it will fail just about any other test ... you can bank on this.
except that Uniforum seems to be using nslookup for the test, which has
subtle failure modes, especially is used in commandline mode.
I had several fights with another ccTLD on this over the last x years,
where dig showed properly set up nameservers (mine), yet nslookup threw
errors which they could not interpret correctly.
Someone should tell uniforum to use dig(1) for these tests.
>=20
> One fact that Webcountry should advertise is that they know S**T=20
> about DNS.
> Yes ... they have given you two Nameservers but they both point
> to one machine ... which no registrar will accept anymore these
Actually they gave him 2, and listed a third. I suspected that these are
actually the same machine with 3 diff IP addresses. Clearly does not
fulfil RFC2182 Section 3.1.
> days ... there must physically be two DNS servers (seperate machines)
> Also the actual zone files are NOT setup correctly either.
regards
CT_SAF
One reply suggested that I find a free DNS host like
http://www.centralinfo.net/ set up the domain there and point it to the web
site at my web host using an (A)ddress record.
This goes well beyond my technical knowledge but I'm going to take a look at
their site and see if it is possible.
I will definately follow the advice given and lodge a complaint against
Webcountry via BBB.org as I still feel that I have been cheated.
As Mathias suggested
>>
It is wierd that webcountry is asking you to have the domain delegated to
server.webcountry.net and ns2.webcountry.net, yet they publish only 1 NS
record to www.webcountry.net inside the zone. (this is what uniforum is
complaining about)
The nameservers listed in the delegation should be the *same* as those
listed
in-zone. In this respect, webcountry is giving you conflicting
information/instructions
(they tell you to use server/ns2 but list www as NS record).
<<
and Mitch...
>>
nslookup -q=all internethosting.co.za server.webcountry.net
nslookup -q=all internethosting.co.za ns2.webcountry.net
If you look carefully at the lookup results you will notice
that both nameservers respond that the nameserver
delegated for your zone is in fact www.webcountry.net
and not server.webcountry.net and ns2.webcountry.net
This will not pass the Uniforum test ... sorry.
The reason is that according to your zone records ... there is only
one nameserver delegated for your domain name ... and it does not
include either of the two that you have specified.
>>
As regards the payment issue...
Fortunately, payment isn't an issue yet ( if I'm not mistaken Uniforum only
requires payment within 30 days. The domain name does belong to us at
Infosite and is registered in the name of Steven Collen ie. Infosite)
Nevertheless, this is a valid point. I will make payment during the next 48
hours and fax the slip to avoid any potential problems that may arise in the
near future.
I really appreciate all your input as it will help me to state my case
clearly when I lodge my complaint against Webcountry.
regards and many thanks
Grant