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But, here's what was in the WHOIS response, along with the other data. WnTF did this start happening?

Using what WHOIS service?

Neither DNSStuff or DomainTools give anything of the sort.

I'm guessing it started happening when you started using a WHOIS website that inserts shitty ads in its responses...

Perhaps you can explain what is not valid in the WHOIS information for these domains?

Perhaps you could open both links and see for yourself.

ICANN address from whois record (on domain):
      Registrant:
            Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
            (IANA) (IANA)
            4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
            Marina del Rey, CA 90292 US
            Email: *****@icann.org

      Administrative Contact:
            ICANN
            Roman Pelikh
            4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
            Marina del Rey, CA 90292
            Phone: +1.3103015821
            Email: *****@icann.org

      Technical Contact:
            ICANN
            Mehmet Akcin
            4676 Admiralty Way #330
            Marina del Rey, ca 90292 US
            Phone: +1.3103015810
            Email: ******@icann.org

The other link, containing their address, is a paper on ICANNs own website, titled "Letter from Louis Touton to Bruce Beckwith Regarding Breach of VeriSign Registrar's Accreditation Agreement (Whois Data Accuracy) - 3 September 2002"

    Bruce Beckwith
    Network Solutions, Inc. Registrar
    505 Huntmar Park Drive
    Herndon, VA 20170
    Tel: 1-703-742-4817

So to answer your question: Everything. The entire address, and their phone number. Even the full company name doesn't match!

It's obvious they didn't follow their own rules by providing valid whois contact information.

The domain information for the US court system is:

United State District Court
Southern District of New York
http://www1.nysd.uscourts.gov/index.php
207.41.15.28

Country IP Range: 207.40.0.0 to 207.43.255.255

It should be fun finding out what Youtube videos, the court system have been viewing...

whois information has nothing to do with DNS. You should use whois amazon.com -h whois.networksolutions.com to get proper info. What you saw is a result of wildcard search in wrong whois server.

The DNS servers for a domain name are announced in root DNS servers - and there, everything is fine. For example, dig NS amazon.com @a.gtld-servers.net return correct DNS servers: udns1.ultradns.net. and udns2.

However, dnsreport show lots of errors with nameservers:
http://private.dnsstuff.com/tools/dnsreportsmpl.ch?domain=amazon.com

http://www.dnsstuff.com/
Though the site itself has gotten a lot more commercial than it once was the DNS report tool gives some nifty info. Other than that you'll be wanting to investigate `dig' (IIRC) and trying some various interesting commands.

I have. I couldn't email several important people because their ISPs started using various RBLs.

I've been in your shoes with large e-mail service providers. One in particular (let's call it Company Y) treated my e-mail in each of the following ways over the course of a year: spam box (slightly tolerable), blackhole (never got delivered), and just plain rejected at the MTA level. I made an effort to contact them about whitelisting my domain (as I was not on any known blacklist), but it seemed to fall on deaf ears. However, just recently, I mistakenly used a person's address at Company Y, and it actually landed in the non-spam inbox.

Maybe a few things (in aggregate with other people) caused the problem to be solved:
1) I contacted Company Y and tried not to be an ass.
2) I started directing my friends and family to use the competitor (let's call it Company G), as I wasn't having any problems there. My friends and family listened to me (or at least considered it) because I gave a reasoned explanation, and I tried not to be an ass.
3) I mentioned my problem to an employee (friend of a friend) at Company Y (although this employee did not work with e-mail), gave a reasoned explanation, and I tried not to be an ass. Who knows if any water cooler talk got to the right person.. but it couldn't hurt to try.

Over the years, I've had my domains hosted on various ISPs, but in each case, I've made sure that I was allowed to have a server. In the few cases I wasn't, I had the server hosted elsewhere. I'm not saying you're running a mail server where you're not supposed to (I have no idea), but e-mail coming from a dynamic IP address that is allocated to a provider that prohibits servers is just asking to be flat-out rejected. I see too many attempts from dial-up and home cable providers with obviously bogus sender envelope information to know that this general categorization holds true. If you have a provider that allows e-mail servers, and you're still having problems with certain ISPs/e-mail service providers, and you're sure you're not on any blacklist (try http://www.dnsstuff.com/ ), then try contacting the ISP like I mentioned above. If the ISP is not willing to help you, there are other e-mail provider services you could recommend to your friends and relatives.

I could go on and on, but it boils down to trying everything you think is possible before you give up. What are the particulars of your domain?

I get at least 2 average 3 attempts to root my system from all over the world. One odd thing is that Romanian reverse DNS lookups are just actively refused for this zombie 217.156.110.24. http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?%26ip%3D217.1 56.110.24

I know its either a compromised box of little importance, or some script kid. Best option along with denyhosts is uncommenting "PermitRootLogin no" in sshd_config.

Anyway, what is the motivation for tag.starnets.ro to refuse reverse lookup? No need to answer american queries? Firewalled off the evil americans? Hiding something?

Could conjecture all day on that. The bot that hit me next was from California 68.183.62.151. Apparently a DSL Extreme customer running an SSH server open to the public no less. Probably rooted by that very means. They really wanted the user "test" to work apparently.

Why isn't this kind of tresspass prosecutable, at least inside the US.

Your completely offtopic but did you try looking up the IP in the spam database lookup tool at: http://www.dnsstuff.com/ ?

Usually tells you whoes blocking you and some sort of link to whatever RBL is doing it. Some of the lists even give you a copy of the email with full headers. Ive had some compromised machines that were tracked down using headers.

So, what cool keyword searches do people like to have?

• Dozens for a couple small sites I use.
• Queries for common DB queries using PhpMyAdmin on box. (for example, 'ecdbqid' for looking up eC user by id; localdb just for PhpMyAdmin on localhost.)
• demd5 for a reverse md5 lookup (+ demd5a through demd5c in case it's not found in the first database).
• de for http://www.dict.cc/?s=%25s
• e2 for Everything2
• ol for Onelook
• anagram for http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagr am=%25s
• dns for http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=%25s
• Shortcuts for numerous Google searches, of course.
• rot13 for http://rot13.com/index.php?text=%25s
• ensv for http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran?type=text&fr om=eng&to=swe&text=%25s (At some point, I intend to define keywords for all the combos, but I think I have to edit bookmarks.html directly to do that en masse.)

One interesting method is to query an anti-spam database using your IP address, and see if you are listed as a spam source. Quick checks can be done at robtex or dnsstuff.

If your IP address shows up on PSBL, CBL, SpamCop, or WPBL your host is probably infected and a source of spam or other abuse.

Here is a simple demonstration that can give concrete examples of how IP address does NOT equal person.
1) Buy a broadband router (LinkSys or whatever).
2) Take the router and plug it into the network in the courthouse. Every modern courthouse has an internet connection. (The clerk next to the judge likely has a PC with a connection)
3) Take your laptop and wirelessly connect to the router.
4) Goto: www.whatismyip.com to show everyone what your (public) IP address is.
5) Now, goto http://www.dnsstuff.com/ and lookup that IP. Since it's a govt issued IP it will likely say that under the whois.
6) Now, using whatever p2p app they say was used, go find that same music (or similarly infringing material) and download it. Right in front of the judge. When it's complete offer the judge your services in defense of copyright infringement.

1 caveat: they might be "blocking" that app from the courthouse; not likely though. The idea is just to show the judge, before his very eyes, that you can infringe copyright in that very courtroom and FRAME him for it!
Now offer to the judge that, especially since they claim the hard drive they received is not the one they expected, it is entirely possible that someone stole your client's (specifically omit wireless) connection, just like you did today in the courthouse. Maybe when the RIAA comes looking, this time they will come looking for the judges PC and not yours.

Wireless routers, for simplicity of setup, NEVER secure the wireless connection. No WEP key is required and there is no MAC filtering. This is default, out-of-the-box behavior straight from bestbuy. It's TRIVIAL to borrow someone else's connection and cause trouble. It isn't even always MALICIOUS! Your neighbor could accidentally connect to the wrong router (Many brands comes out of the box with an identical network name). Seeing is believing -- show them how easy it is.

Just for the hell of it:

http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=threespe ech.com

"should a government-chosen domain registry be allowed to enforce their own moral code on the public?"

yes.

your right to free speech does not:
1. extend to other countries
2. usually does not extend to material unsuitable for minors, depending on the situation and audience.
(like creepy domainnames for porn site)
3. does not extend to other things, like slander, libel, false advertising, misrepresentation, etc.

mostly your right to free speech is there to criticize the government(your own government), it's not there so you can download child porn.

If you want to get upset, having a nazi.xx domain is illegal in most European countries. but as far as I know it is legal in the US. WHOIS for: nazi.com, nazi.org

I personally find domains like IHR.ORG and VHO.ORG far more offensive, they belong to Holocaust denial groups. Relastically we should ban those domains before we ban BIGJUICYSLUTS.COM (is that a real domain? I bet it is)

"should a government-chosen domain registry be allowed to enforce their own moral code on the public?"

yes.

your right to free speech does not:
1. extend to other countries
2. usually does not extend to material unsuitable for minors, depending on the situation and audience.
(like creepy domainnames for porn site)
3. does not extend to other things, like slander, libel, false advertising, misrepresentation, etc.

mostly your right to free speech is there to criticize the government(your own government), it's not there so you can download child porn.

If you want to get upset, having a nazi.xx domain is illegal in most European countries. but as far as I know it is legal in the US. WHOIS for: nazi.com, nazi.org

I personally find domains like IHR.ORG and VHO.ORG far more offensive, they belong to Holocaust denial groups. Relastically we should ban those domains before we ban BIGJUICYSLUTS.COM (is that a real domain? I bet it is)

Another thing to do is, when you receive spam mail, to run the domain name through a whois lookup and possibly get the name of an administrator for the server, and contact them about it to make sure they're aware of potential problems with their system. It won't always work, but it might sometimes. http://www.dnsstuff.com/ for those of you who don't have whois as a basic utility.

yeah...another good one is dnsstuff.com

Itll give you alot of stuff. NSLOOKUP on the A record will give you the IP. It's also got a ping and tracert so if you cant ping it from your location, you can ping it by proxy (effectivaly pinging from another location - very helpful if you run a server and theres a network issue down the line).

Is DVD Jon working hard on this?

Jani uses that network: google for jani elisa-laajakaista.fi

There's no Google results of him using that specific ip address before.

But, that ip address does belong to that network: Reverse DNS lookup for 88.112.115.63

CEO: Good news guys, the web devs have completed the search facility and our website will go live next week.
Lowly Ex-MS Employee: So what domain name have we chosen?
CEO: Good question, I'll let our CTO answer that one.
CTO: ahem, well as some of you know, we registered ohloh.org, ohloh.com & ohloh.net through "Proxy" registrars before the final decision was made. In the conference call with Bill we had last week we made our decision.
Lowly Ex-MS Employee: and?
CTO: Well the decision was made that "ohloh.org" would be ditched... it's simply to difficult to masquerade as a .org organisation - after all, we clearly want to profit from OSS some way or another. The .com address, well we decided that it should re-direct to the .net address. For Marketing purposes we will use the .net address as it is sufficiently vague as whether it is a profiteering company of open source ideals or an open source organisation without profit aspirations.
CEO: I think you'll all agree that this is an ingenious idea.

ohloh.net whois entry
ohloh.com whois entry
ohloh.org whois entry

Or, if you have popups blocked, here's one of the easiest ways:

http://www.whatismyipaddress.com/

You can even tell your grandmother to type what is my ip address into her browser window (omitting the spaces) and it will resolve for her. Of course, there are tons of other ones out there. http://www.dnsstuff.com/ will tell you as well, with only a few Google ads.

The most effective spam fighting effort is totally anonymous; they have to be, because that's the only way they can avoid being sued into oblivion by deep-pocketed croporations (it's outright ironic that in order to protect their freedom of speech - saying that so-and-so is a spammer, they have to register their domain in Siberia, of all places!!!)

Spammers are outright criminals and will stop at nothing to damage antispammers.

Plenty of people had a load of trouble from a spectacularly inept spammer.

For example, the author of this page (a page denouncing the spammer) had the spammer complain to the police which launched a criminal investigation that found nothing. After this failed, he barrages everyone who mirrors the page with complaints to their ISPs (this page get 5 DMCA takedown notices PER DAY).

When the police complaints did lead nowhere, he simply harassed various police departments.

Finally, seeing that the takedown notice make the mirrorers rotating the hosting of the relevant parts complained about, thus rendering it totally ineffective, he started to try to DDOs the sites hosting the pages.

Many of the mirrorers would never had been able to denounce that particular spammer if they had been doing so under their real identities; anonymity is particularly vital when dealing with criminals, or lawsuit-happy individuals.

Another example is this well-known spammer, threatening legal action against antispam fighters. If you follow the thread, you will find a frothing lunatic that demands the identity of several spamfighters who have to work anonymously in order to avoid the hassle of lawsuits from spammers.

In 2003, the same antispam outfit was sued by spammers. Even though the lawsuit was thrown out of court, it was not without considerable annoyance and expense to the antispammers involved.

Only absolutely positive anonymity can help protect antispammers against the spammers.

I don't know if this is the one you are referring to, but I use http://dnsreport.com/ for the quick list of problems, and http://www.dnsstuff.com/ for the rest.

Domain ID:D1704028-LROR
Domain Name:OPENLINUX.ORG
Created On:03-Aug-1998 04:00:00 UTC
Last Updated On:10-Nov-2004 04:47:01 UTC
Expiration Date:02-Aug-2006 04:00:00 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Dotster, Inc. (R34-LROR)
Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:DOTR-00936995
Registrant Name:Domain Administrator
Registrant Organization:The SCO Group
Registrant Street1:355 S 520 W
Registrant Street2:Suite 100
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Lindon
Registrant State/Province:UT
Registrant Postal Code:84042
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.8019325800
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant ******************@sco.com
Admin ID:DOTC-03050361
Admin Name:Domain Administrator
Admin Organization:The SCO Group
Admin Street1:355 S 520 W
Admin Street2:Suite 100
Admin Street3:
Admin City:Lindon
Admin State/Province:UT
Admin Postal Code:84042
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.8019325800
Admin Phone Ext.:
Admin FAX:
Admin FAX Ext.:
Admin ******************@sco.com
Tech ID:DOTC-03050361
Tech Name:Domain Administrator
Tech Organization:The SCO Group
Tech Street1:355 S 520 W
Tech Street2:Suite 100
Tech Street3:
Tech City:Lindon
Tech State/Province:UT
Tech Postal Code:84042
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.8019325800
Tech Phone Ext.:
Tech FAX:
Tech FAX Ext.:
Tech ******************@sco.com
Name Server:NS.CALDERASYSTEMS.COM
Name Server:NS2.CALDERASYSTEMS.COM

I am not a laywer, this is not legal commentary or advice or anything of the sort.

Exactly what is the relationship is a good question. Digging into it, it's a heck of a lot more than your normal laywer-client relationship. Read on..

"SPI projects shouldn't be taking advice from Sun's attorneys. We should be taking advice from SPI's attorneys" states the second of the linked articles.

Which does indeed suggest that, at least from a legal point of view, Debian is merely a project of SPI's. In fact, if you whois on debian.org, sure enough, SPI are the registrant.

In fact, in http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/06/msg00 287.html, it seems that Debian doesn't even EXIST as a legal entity. Thus, who is taking the legal risk of Debian's actions should Sun decide to sue? (In other words, who would Sun sue?) http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/06/msg00 293.html explores that issue. It is either the ftp-master people themselves (the individuals!) or SPI, who (understandably) wish to limit their legal exposure.

Now, it could be argued that the people that made the ftp decision are legally responsible, not SPI. But SPI isn't sure that they could proove that in a court of law (honestly, it would be difficult to get a jury to follow.) And, anyway, if the ftp maintiners are legally responsible, don't you think somebody should tell them the risk that they are personally facing?

SPI figure they should have some say in decisions that could get them sued. Anothony reckons that SPI have nothing to fear and it's just SPI power grabbing for veto.

(Should SPI have such a power? Are they taking all the legal risk? If they are taking all the risk, should they have veto? Are Debian people acting as representatives of SPI? I leave that to you to decide.)

Forbidden You don't have permission to access / on this server. Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. Apache/2.0.58 (Unix) PHP/5.1.4 Server at thepiratebay.org Port 80

yup yup yup. I currently use keywords for google, google images, traceroute, whois, ebay, wiki, xe.net, php.net, mysql.com (though their website is mostly useless (in comparision with the brilliantly useful php.net)), amazon, archive.org, a file extension search page, and ip2country. yay for bookmarks! your suggestions welcome.

FYI:
http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=%25s
http://filext.com/detaillist.php?extdetail=%25s&Su bmit3=Go!
http://whois.webhosting.info/%25s
http://web.archive.org/archive_request_ng?collecti on=web&url=%25s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search =%25s
http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi?Amount=%25s&From =USD&To=GBP
http://www.ezwhois.net/index.php
http://search.ebay.co.uk/search/search.dll?satitle =%25s&ht=1&sokeywordredirect=&from=R8&fkr=1&soloct og=9
http://www.php.net/search.php
http://www.mysql.com/search/?q=%25s&charset=
http://puremango.co.uk/ip2country.php?ip=%25s
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/search-handle- form/026-9212734-6757257

And in a cruel twist of fate, the most valuable (and appropriate) domain name in the .EU TLD, appears to have been registered by precisely the kind of bogus registrar that the article is drawing attention to. Still, at least this one actually has a webpage, even if it is just a single page with an image stuck on it and no text what so ever.

Geolocation by IP is not 100% accurate, but it can be implemented.

See, the funny part is the CIO did find out about this, and she promptly pulled the plug. Dave Schroeder is nothing more than a mac fanatic wanker. He is as annoying on campus mailing lists as he is on slashdot.

Speaking of AUPS... I wonder why the University of Wisconsin is listed as the registrant for a few of his domains. ipodbatteryfaq intelapplefaq. At least they aren't hosted in the UW ip space, that is very much a no no.

See, the funny part is the CIO did find out about this, and she promptly pulled the plug. Dave Schroeder is nothing more than a mac fanatic wanker. He is as annoying on campus mailing lists as he is on slashdot.

Speaking of AUPS... I wonder why the University of Wisconsin is listed as the registrant for a few of his domains. ipodbatteryfaq intelapplefaq. At least they aren't hosted in the UW ip space, that is very much a no no.

fuck.eu? But, but... *I* wanted that domain! ...

Ahh, fuck.it.

Do you have any references to back that up? It seems way off to me. I think you're confusing that with the number of requests that the root servers see that are unnecessary (redundant / could be cached by ISP's) which I believe is 98% -- but that's not 98% of all DNS traffic, not even close.

Check out this, this, this and this; over half of the big ISP's have a cached response for the most popular sites on the net.

Do you have any references to back that up? It seems way off to me. I think you're confusing that with the number of requests that the root servers see that are unnecessary (redundant / could be cached by ISP's) which I believe is 98% -- but that's not 98% of all DNS traffic, not even close.

Check out this, this, this and this; over half of the big ISP's have a cached response for the most popular sites on the net.

Do you have any references to back that up? It seems way off to me. I think you're confusing that with the number of requests that the root servers see that are unnecessary (redundant / could be cached by ISP's) which I believe is 98% -- but that's not 98% of all DNS traffic, not even close.

Check out this, this, this and this; over half of the big ISP's have a cached response for the most popular sites on the net.

Do you have any references to back that up? It seems way off to me. I think you're confusing that with the number of requests that the root servers see that are unnecessary (redundant / could be cached by ISP's) which I believe is 98% -- but that's not 98% of all DNS traffic, not even close.

Check out this, this, this and this; over half of the big ISP's have a cached response for the most popular sites on the net.

Do you really believe I'm not from Canada?

Well he might be from Canada, but he lives in Tucson.

Hiya folks, mod me down to oblivion if you wish but I've been searching for ages for the answer to this question, and in my desperation I'm turning to Slashdot in the full and certain knowledge that I will be modded down to Australia and burned alive by flaims... but,

How do you tell which linux distribution a host is running? I've tried http://www.dnsstuff.com/ and searching google relentlessly.... any help? Pretty please?

Let me get this straight: he can't afford to buy furniture, but can afford to register a domain name and host a website? What kind of screwed up priority is that?
Oh, it's Slashdot - never mind.

No, it's the US economy. Domain names can be had for less than $9 a year, and it costs less to host than to feed a Sally-Struthers-child for a day. Necessities like clothing, food, and shelter, however, are much more expensive.

Incidentally, he's currently hosted in the Netherlands.

Good luck, FedEx.

> Yahoo and Hotmail just assume any home user with their own server is a spammer.

Not exactly. What they assume is that email coming directly from a home user's IP number is spam, and this assumption is 99.9% correct (probably even closer to 100%). Most spam nowadays come from "Zombie PCs" and this means that almost all email being sent directly from home users PCs is spam. Avoiding this email means avoiding most spam. And also avoiding some legetimate, but not much legitimate mail from the point of view of Hotmail or Yahoo.

> ... he gave his email address as slashdot@chrisbartle.com.
> That's obviously one that he created for the occasion and will discard
> as soon as the conversation is over. Can't do stuff like that with most ISPs.

Perhaps he didn't plan to discard it, but he would have to. It takes about 2-3 days for an address posted on Slashdot to be picked up by spammers (from my own experience). Much faster than any other place I know of on the web. Much faster than places like Cnet talkbacks, for instance.

Anyway, being able to use different addresses for receiving email has nothing to do with outgoing mail configuration. The domain is his domain (http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=chrisba rtle.com) and not the ISP's domain. Many hosting companies would accept all email for a domain or allow the domain owner to control which addresses in a domain are accepted. But there's no doubt that you get absolute control by controling your own incoming mail server. However, Chris's problem is not related to incoming email but only to outgoing email. He can run his incoming server on his PC and use another machine to send his email out to the internet (relay it though a service provider).

I host my domain (hadaso _d0t_ net ) with fastmail.fm . I can use any email address in that domain or any subdomain. I can filter incoming email on the server so that I can discard or reject or forward to different addres or file separately email coming to certain addresses. And I can set it up so I receive only at a limited small number of addresses. But I don't come even close to what Chris can do with his own incoming server. Chris has absolute control on what's accepted and what rejected. (For instance, I choose to receive all incoming email and only then filter it, because otherwise I have to resort to at most 10 addresses/subdomains or pay additional fees for more. That's also why I don't use my domain address in Slashdot. I don't have the control I need to block the spam where I want it blocked, or to greylist as Chris does)

I noticed some routing issues earlier today. Specifically, at least one alter.net (MCI)router is unresponsive and RSA's website is un-reachable/-traceable/-pingable. However, the unresponsive router is not listed on dslreport's Router Watch page. I was curious if anyone knew if this Pakistan issue was causing problems for some US sites.

One has to find IBM's SPF record rather amusing :-)
http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/lookup.ch?type=TXT&n ame=ibm.com

Domain Type Class TTL Answer
ibm.com. TXT IN 600 "v=spf1 -all"

Only found Microsoft and Checkpoint using SPF records in their domain mx records so far.

Despite the fact that Hotmail will only be using SPF v2 records to do the filtering, it seems that Hotmail themselves haven't bothered yet to publish one: http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/lookup.ch?type=TXT&n ame=hotmail.com

Anyone know a better place to report phishing scams other than to registrars? I have seen many that are coming from china, japan, chile, and various others. But since my emails are in english, they may not be understood. Is there a better/another place to report them to help them get shut down? Typically I get the ip and look up the information on http://www.dnsstuff.com/ and then report to their registrar. Any other tips? Thx! -Just doin my part to stop scammers and spam.

Yes.

=P

There are just too many people out there in charge of DNS boxes that don't know what they are doing. A few years ago I was one of those people. Then I discovered dnsstuff.com. After that I decided it might be a good idea for me to read up on BIND. DNS is a complex system and if you aren't a CLI jockey, thances are that yours is misconfigured.

Why did you need to contact your friends/relatives to check whether or not your domain gets propagated?
Couldn't you just query DNS servers directly using nslookup and/or dig?
Querying them directly would eliminate you from wondering if the machine you are checking from has the DNS cached and you wouln't need to flush it (why would you need your friends/relatives to reboot their machines?). Not to mention the amount of time you would spend in having to coordinate this type of testing.
Even if you don't want to use nslookup and/or dig from your Windows/Linux/Mac/whatever, there are tools available via the web that can help as well.
This certainly is not a list of all the tools, or even the best ones... they're just ones that I have used in the past:

dig Web-based "dig" tool
nslookup Web-based "nslookup" tool
DNS Report Checks for DNS errors and provides nicely formatted information on a given domain
DNS Stuff Various web-based DNS tools

There are many online DNS tools DNS report being one of the best and DNS stuff being very powerful but harder to use. I also like Dig it Man! for simple DNS checks. Also many large internet providers usually have allkinds of online network tools available online on their webpages.

You mean the parent registrar? Did you try doing a WHOIS? THe domain is registered with TUCOWS.

dns issues?