RE: DNS Host Handles/Registrations

["Vivien M." <vivienm () dyndns org>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog () merit edu [mailto:owner-nanog () merit edu]On Behalf Of
> measl () mfn org
> Sent: November 7, 2001 3:58 PM
> To: Adam McKenna
> Cc: nanog () merit edu
> Subject: Re: DNS Host Handles/Registrations
>
>
> It appears that the person who "believed" that NSOL was the central
> repository for this was correct.  Changes are made at NSOL, and picked up
> by other resgistrars via whois.

You can get quirky situations, though, because the NSI registrar division does not update its database of registered 
name servers from the NSI registry.

eg: We have domains, eg something.org, registered with Dotster and then nsX.something.org. We used the Dotster 
procedures to register name servers, blah blah blah, NSI registry has things fine. When our first user went to NSI 
registrAR and put nsX.something.org in, then NSI registrar created them in NSI registrar database, and made the contact 
person whoever our user's domain's technical contact was. (Naturally, this user chose not to specify us as the 
technical contact, just to make this messier) When we started this, we had two name servers, and then when we added a 
third one, it found itself in the NSOL registrar database, with yet another different contact person.

Now, here is where this gets messy: we added more servers, and the one that was ns3 became ns5, and ns3 got a new IP 
somewhere else. We went to Dotster, told them to make the changes, changes went to NSI registrY just fine. NSI 
registAR, however, continues to have ns3.something.org with the original IP, so if someone specifies ns5.something.org 
in an NSI registrar form with that IP, they'll say "That IP is already registered in the database". If we try to use 
NSI registrAR form for changing DNS server IPs, then that won't work, because either a) NSI doesn't do something.org, 
which is true, or b) we're not the technical contact for it, which is also true. (BTW, if we try to create the DNS 
server first with NSI registrar to avoid it going to someone else, then naturally NSI registrar says they don't do 
something.org and thus to register the DNS server with the appropriate registrar)

Very very very messy situation, and calling NSI doesn't seem to help, or maybe it does, we never figured it out... 
Generally, these things fix themselves after perhaps a month or two, but it's very annoying when you have your users 
emailing you about stupid NSI form errors. Also, you have the cosmetic aspect of it: our documentation says that 
nsX.something.org is 2.3.4.5, which it is in reality/NSI registry, but when our users WHOIS their domains, they see 
nsX.something.org there as 1.2.3.4, the old IP, and then they email wondering if they did it right.

This is why we don't particularly recommend NSI as a registrar...

Vivien
-- 
Vivien M.
vivienm () dyndns org
Assistant System Administrator
Dynamic DNS Network Services
http://www.dyndns.org/