More .us Domain Problems?

possible asks: "My .us domain registrations supposedly went through on April 27th 2002. However, even though register.com's .us FAQ states that you can use their Domain Manager to edit addresses, aliases, MX records, and SOA's for your .us domain, I have not been able to do ANYTHING yet. When I called their technical support on May 1st, they basically said "This is Neustar's fault, in the meantime we have to do everything manually." So I had them set up my MX and name records over the phone. 6 days later, I'm still unable to resolve my domains. Today I called register.com again they told me 'Somehow your zone file got corrupted, you have to realize that .us domains are a new thing and it's not going smoothly for many people.' Some of my friends are having similar .us problems with different registrars. Is anyone else having problems with their .us domains? Does anyone know what the underlying problem is?"

Comments

Do you need to ask?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know what the underlying problem is?

Capitalism.

.us Zone Configuration

[saveth]

Shouldn't configuring zones for .us domains be as simple as cloning the methods for configuring other zones and doing a giant `s/.com/.us/g`? I suspect there are other changes also involved in the process, but I'm sure they are trivial.

What is Neustar's problem?

Re:.us Zone Configuration

[Skapare]

It's not Neustar having problems. My changes put in at Verisign (I have one .us domain there) go through quickly just fine. But the changes at register.com (also one .us domain there) are not going through at all. I think register.com is having problesm deploying their software. They did offer to update manually, but so far it hasn't been done correctly.

Re:.us Zone Configuration

[iiii]

Hey, you should know better than to post bad regex around here. :-)

You'll need to escape your dots, like this: :s/\.com/\.us/g Otherwise you might replace somethings you didn't want to, like "thecommons.com" -> "th.usmons.us". Also, you'll probably want to do it on every line, so something like this :%s/\.com/\.us/g or g/\.com/s/\.com/\.us/g would be better.

Re:.us Zone Configuration

[penguinboy]

I'd assume that the s/// expression would be in something like a foreach $domain (@domains) {} loop, thus making the /g option unnecessary.

a new thing?

[emag]

[register.com] told me 'Somehow your zone file got corrupted, you have to realize that .us domains are a new thing and it's not going smoothly for many people.'

Maybe what the should have said is "a new thing for us". I remember several years ago registering a .us back when it was run by someone competent. Once VeriSign/NSI took it over, I knew there'd be problems. I moved across the country after this took place, tried to register a new .us domain using the same application I'd used, substituting for the new state and locality, and was rejected because they couldn't read plain English. They suggested some assinine, misspelled name which was only tangentially related to what I'd requested, even though the domain I was requesting was available.

I can't imagine that things have gotten any better since then, even with a new company handling .us registrations. Since I was rejected, I've gone with a .org domain through joker, and haven't looked back since.

In their attempt to monopolize as much domain registration as possible, VeriSign/NSI has managed to cause a lot more damage for .us than there have been benefits.

Re:a new thing?

[emag]

No, it was originally VeriSign who took over, as the following email I received to both admin@ and hostmaster@ for my .us domain on 2000/11/21 shows:

To all administrative and technical contacts:

Effective November 28, 2000, VeriSign Global Registry Services ("VeriSign GRS"), a division of Network Solutions, Inc., will assume direct administration of the .US domain. This transition will not result in any technical service-level change. VeriSign GRS services will be available
to domain name registrants for whom VeriSign GRS maintains the .US domain name registration record subject to the terms of its interim service agreement, a copy of which appears below for your review.

Your continued registration of a .US domain name beyond November 27, 2000, and the use of our .US domain name registration services constitutes your acceptance of the terms of the Agreement below.

Best regards,

United States Domain Registry
VeriSign Global Registry Services
www.verisign-grs.com
usdomhelp@verisign -grs.com

Plus, according to this site on November 2, 2000 Amendment 21 was added to the NSI Cooperative Agreement. It wasn't unter October, 2001 that Neustar was granted control of US-DOM, with the transition completed in November, 2001.

Although, the arguably worst part of the time VeriSign/NSI was controlling .us directly was, IMHO, the requirement to sign and fax in a copy of the agreement--in 2000, when at least a year and a half earlier everything was handled in email by ISI--in order to activate a new .us domain. I wonder how many people decided to just forget about getting a .us domain when they got to that part...

not really new

[dirvish]

you have to realize that .us domains are a new thing and it's not going smoothly for many people

.us isn't new, it has been around as long as any of the country code domains, it is just new to the registrars. You used to be able to get them for free, although they had fit a specific format (ie name.city.county.state.us or something like that).

Sounds like this whole thing has been a fiasco

[Disevidence]

First there was the problem with neustar not putting aside some domain names for public use, and now this crap. Its all to do with the dollar sign being flashed first and service coming a distance second. The .us domain has been around for a while AFAIK. Its just that these compaines are new to handling it. Their incompetence, nothing to do with it being new.

But what can we expect on the domain-registering front nowadays? Look at verisign and bulkregister. Instead of spending money upgrading quality and customer service, they're going to use it to run sleazy campaigns and sue the living daylights out of each other.

Its got to go back to the non-profit organization model. This sorta stuff really stinks.

If it's any consolation...

[Big Sean O]

Toys"R"Us isn't live either, and I'm sure they're scammed that name right off the bat.
.

Re:If it's any consolation...

[Skapare]

All the 1 letter and 2 letter domains are reserved, as are many others. I found the list somewhere (forgot where, but I'm sure it's somewhere at Neustar) and put it online here (compressed text is here).

ehh?

[_Neurotic]

Excuse me, but what do problems with your DNS have to do with the .US registry?

Once your nameserver records are in place, how well your DNS works is dependant on whoever provides your DNS, not the registry.

I have a number of .US domains I registered through eNom that work fine thank you very much. I have edited the DNS that eNom provides without issue.

Justin

Re:ehh?

[Skapare]

The root servers delegate the .us zone to the Neustar servers, which are:

• a.gtld.biz - 209.173.53.162
• b.gtld.biz - 209.173.57.162
• c.gtld.biz - 209.173.60.65

Recursive lookup starts a one of the servers in root-servers.net, and goes to the above, then finally to your registered DNS servers (yours, or you ISP's, or the registrar's).

Now there are still some problems:

• There are only 3 servers handling .us whereas there are 13 for .com, etc.
• All 3 servers are in the same netblock, and this suggests maybe even the same physical location.
• The TTL (time to live) is set to only 15 minutes at the 3 servers (compared to 2 days at the .com servers ... a ratio of 1:192).
• If you don't use a .us domain as your DNS servers, then there's an extra lookup because the A-records with the server IPs don't get added in the response (this is how DNS is supposed to work).

I registered 2 domains in .us, one via register.com and the other via Verisign/Netsol. I, too, had trouble getting my DNS servers set up via register.com. They finally said they could do it manually, but then they goofed that up by entering them wrong after giving me an excuse that some of them had no IPs (they did ... but they weren't the ones I wanted used, though). OTOH, with Verisign, I was able to change my DNS servers just fine, and it went through in 6 hours (while everyone says it can take 24-72 hours). My only beef with Verisign is the limit of 4 DNS servers. I've had another person also tell me eNom is working OK for them.

Re:ehh?

[doogles]

All 3 servers are in the same netblock, and this suggests maybe even the same physical location.

That doesn't appear to be the case. All three of the IP addresses you listed are in separate /24 netblocks. A traceroute to each reveals a different path for me (UUNet vs SprintLink vs Qwest).

Some of your other points appear to be quite valid, though.

Re:ehh?

[raju1kabir]

There are only 3 servers handling .us whereas there are 13 for .com, etc.

Yeah, but there are about 10 people a month looking up .us domains, vs 10,000,000 a day looking up .com domains.

All 3 servers are in the same netblock, and this suggests maybe even the same physical location.

Suggests, to the naïve, but certainly does not require. Traceroute to 4.2.49.1 and then to 4.2.49.2. Same subnet (unless you use mask 255.255.255.255), and yet they're 3000 miles apart.

Re:ehh?

[Skapare]

That can be done by simple BGP trickery. I know, because I've done it before. What they have is redundant paths through those 3 upstreams, which is certainly better than none. But it just doesn't say one way or the other what locations these are in. Can one fire take out all of .us because 3 pipes converge in the same building? The thing is, we don't know.

Re:Sounds rough

[Arker]

Any reason you went with the .us domain instead of the old faithful .com?

I'm not him, but I can think of several good reasons, starting with the fact that practically all the useful .com namespace is either in use or being squatted, by Network Associates if by no one else.

onsidering that one can't get back to the real /. homepage from any particular server, it seems like quite a bad interface design. It started right after /. came back from its 2 hour hiatus earlier. Perhaps some bad code went in?

Actually it's been doing that on and off for several weeks now. No idea what the problem is.

Re:register.com apparently just sucks.

[lizrd]

I have to report the exact same experience with GoDaddy. Everything there worked just fine. I had my own DNS servers configured beforehand and by the 25th, the root servers were pointing to my servers to resolve bump.us.

I really don't understand why the poster thinks that the registrar has anything to do with zone files and MX records. Those things are the responsibility of your DNS provider. Since people other than register.com are able to successfully provide DNS service for .us domains I'd be inclined to blame register.com rather than Neustar or some vast unnamed internet conspiracy.