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Network Solutions Take 2
sirkin writes "Washington Post Technews is reporting that VeriSign is resurrecting the Network Solutions name with a new subsidiary responsible for domain name registration. It seems so eerily familiar."
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New subsidiary? That's funny, I could have sworn they sent me something about renewing through them...
It seems so eerily familiar.
I thought the same thing, Hemos, but it actually isn't a dupe.
Given that Verisign seems to charge 3x as much as other providers of the various services it offers, I wonder about their motivation here. Could this be an attempt to camouflage their image?
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
Verisign tried to change the name last July, but it took six months for the change to go through.
Among them are the hassle-free domain transfer as well as the "helpful and targeted" informational mailing sent out on the daily basis to thousands of small site operators by their "trusted partners".
Ñ'
Maybe they're realizing people don't want to submit DNA samples to fix incorrect information regarding their domain name.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
...Verisign isn't trying to change the name; someone faxed forms with fake signatures in, and the temps just processed the forms without checking them. Next, Verisign will have to go through a dispute process to get its corporate name back.
--
Vote for your hopes, not for your fears - Vote Third Party
If this move improves Verisign/Network Solution's customer service for domain names and DNS management, I'm all in favor. Although that service has been pretty abysmal, I get the impression they are genuinely trying to do better. I signed up for their Advanced DNS Manager for one of my domains after 24-hour failure at DNSMadeEasy made me nervous. The overall reliability and redundancy of Network Solutions' DNS servers appears to be outstanding, but the site for editing DNS records has sometimes been unavailable. At $24/yr/domain, all parts of the system should work all of the time, in my always humble opinion. ---- This is not really a sig.
Sigmund
A pile of shit by any other name smells just as foul.
Everyone hated Network Solutions...Verisign bought 'em, and they bought the hate right along with it. Maybe they figure that the bad blood will be isolated if they spin the old name and business back off into a more seperate entity.
And I was hoping to register netsol.com when they let it expire.
Plus lets look at it from a pure financial arena. Back in "the day" Network Solutions was basically the only place to grab a domain name, but that's not true anymore. Check This out for a little taste of why NetSol is screwed in the market. I remember switching from NetSol, to register.com to finally, Tucows OpenSRS which is dirt cheap. But NetSol is like the microsoft of the DNS world where people know it as being fairly big and its security sucks.
With the trtouble to get MY OWN DOMAIN out of their database, I hope they go bankrupt and never set up anytype of ecommerce site again. Does anyone have anything positive to say about netsol, I mean they really were and are a horrible company that overprices everything. I mean look at verisign now, the prices for a "virtual certificate". Insane.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Suppose you've got some domains registered through network solutions. How do you switch to a different registrar? Do you have to wait until your registration has expired with netsol or what? Who do people think is a good registrar? I was looking at dotster...are they decent?
Apart from the hokey 'mail from' security scheme they used to use, I find that getting through to them when there is a problem is nearly impossible. The drones on the phone (if you can find the phone number) know so little about DNS that it is physically painful, and they charge extra for what other registrars include in the price of the registration.
In addition to that they are constantly trying to 'slam' my customers into changing registrars and breaking their domain names in the process. They also denied one of my customers' transfers because there was a 'special' on that account. (I later found that a special meant was set to expire in under a month, and they were trying to prevent the change of registrar from going through.)
They are a thoroughly pitiful organization and they deserve all the headaches they have caused me over the years.
Actually, if you want to transfer domains to Verisign/NetSol, they play the same game as Register.com and some others, of offering you a low first-year's transfer fee, then later renewals at higher than the bulk registration market's price.
I recently switched a bunch of names from Melbourne IT to Register.com after getting a flyer in the mail offering a transfer ("plus remaining time on your old registration" for something like $15 per year, or cheaper if you get longer terms. Unfortunately, their normal quoted registrations are like $30 a year, so I wouldn't have done it otherwise. Verisign's offer was similar (no flyer needed but $19 a year for transfers), but I was a bit leery of their bad rep regarding tying up domain names that expire, yanking registrations away anytime a big business hints that it wants a domain, etc., and I remembered the spam that I got from them to my hostmaster address when a domain was registered through them.
For that matter, the agent of Melbourne IT that I went through had prices similar to Verisign's, but I had to order and renew each domain separately, which was a pain, and I figured, if another provider (in this case, Register.com) could do it cheaper and put them all in one place for me to manage, great. If they try to charge me the "regular" price next year, I'll move them all again; I'll risk a few placements with "bulk" registrars once I see that they've survived another year post-internet-burst-bubble.
One thing I do miss about having my domains at the old Network Solutions: the ability to use a crypto key to manage the domains, and doing it all through email. Of course, the downside of using email for their plaintext password alternative was that anyone could see that password, and I'm guessing that email insecurity made forging transfers easier.
Get off my launchpad!
Whether you consider yourself a Keynesian, or in the old-clasical camp of economists, I somehow tremble at some industries inability to make a profit.
The registration of domain names seems fairly staid, and yet, common-sense would dictate that little or no profit could really be meagered from such a one-point sale business. Wal-Mart on the other attempts multiple low-cost sales, with a wide variety of products. Though I'm not sure of the ROI for Verisign, I have a feeling, once all said and done, it's less than ten-percent. As a another inidicator, airlines make five to eight percent return on their money (though probably that number is worse as of late).
So the question I pose is thus: if a business or industry barely breaks even, and that industry or business is crucial to the welfare of our nation-state, shouldn't the government monopolize that business for the sake of our well-being? The answer, unfortunately, is NO. Because no matter how badly a business is run in the free-market, the government would only do worse.
So when it comes to privatization of airlines, oil, or domain names (the free flow of information is becoming more central to our security), I applaud a business trying to be more competitive, trying to evolve, trying to find a better way to manage customers, even if they stumble in doing so.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Verisign has realized that this part of their business is not profitable and is getting ready to sell it off, again. By putting the name back, they separate Network Solutions from Verisign and play on the name recognition for the eventual sale of the company. I doubt that such a sale would do as well if it were sold as The Company Formerly Known as a Division of Verisgn.
Stop Continental Drift! Reunite Gondwanaland!
Man... I HATE VeriSign. They've recently allowed a large number of my company's domains to be hyjacked TWICE within the last 3 months. (and yes all of our contact info and passwords are secure)
We're now getting started with a criminal investigation (I'll probably send the details into Slashdot in a few weeks). VeriSign is a horrable company. They are insecure, they have a pathetic legal deptartment (only about 3 people), it is nearly impossible reach anyone aside from tech support, etc etc. VeriSign makes MicroSoft look like an angel.
dotster anyone?
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
"Network Solutions" has been a very sincere curse around our company ever since I went through hell and back getting our domain name registered (around 1994). We had 'gsti.com' at the time, 'gst.com' had lapsed about a year previously but not been officially released by the previous owners, and NS refused to transfer the registration without an email or a fax from the previous owners (as opposed to their current policy of allowing transfer within 30 seconds of lapsing). I finally had to track down the previous holders and beg and plead them to send a fax, as their company and its email services were long since defunct.
I'm no longer a sysadmin around here, but the people who are admins respect my opinions, and we will deal with a reconstituted "Network Solutions" over my dead body. How they can think that that name has any positive value in the world today is beyond me.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Why would you register a domain name through VeriSign anyways???
Use register.com's Name Bargain!!
BTW: Anyone know of a RELIABLE place that is cheaper than this??
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
But in a 2002 survey of Internet address buyers, VeriSign found that 87 percent of them were familiar with the name "Network Solutions" and could identify it as a domain name seller ...
...
Of course, they don't say why their name is recognizable. Long hold-times, bad support, dubious transfer-away procedures
87% of Internet address buyers are also familiar with the phrase "bunch of crappy morons".
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
They're Baaaaaak!
My doctor has advised me to not discuss the plethora of issues I've historically had with Verisign/NSI due to my blood pressure.
What I see now however, is most of the alternative registrars being almost as bad.
We migrated all our domains over to Dotster a few years back and in the beginning we were concerned with the stability of their IIS-based system, which would often crawl to a stop in SSL mode during business hours. We actually had to make post-it note reminders to perform domain maintenance on their system later in the day because their site often was too slow. When they migrated over to a Unix-based system, we were very pleased.
However, recently, Dotster, who was a decent registrar in my opnion, has really gone down the tubes. Their automated domain renewal system seems to not work. The web page where users can enter credit card info on file has been broken (their response, "Nobody uses that page much so we didn't notice it was broken"). And most recently, the've unleashed this obnoxious web-hosting-component company called Hostlane, which has invoiced us for services we didn't ask for and automatically charged credit cards. What's insidious is that the hosting charge is the same amount as domain renewal, which seems to make it suspiciously appear as if they're trying to sneak extra charges through on the customer's billing statements.
I am fed up with these registrars and their sleazy business practices. NSI was the first and the worst, but now so many of the others, from Verisign to Verio, Register.com and others, they all are the pits. Does anyone have any advice for what the best choice is now? I can no longer recommend Dotster.
...a 2002 survey of Internet address buyers, VeriSign found that 87 percent of them were familiar with the name "Network Solutions" and could identify it as a domain name seller, while few recognized the name "VeriSign,"...
A lot of people recognise the name "Osama" too, but that doesn't necessarily come as a positive thing for him when a large portion of those people want him dead.
Verisign should recognise that there is a difference between "famous" and "infamous"... from reading the posting of the slashdot crew here, I think Verisign would be much better off to build a new easy-to-remember untarnished name, rather than resurrecting one dripping with poor opinion and bad history.
Verisign Horror Stories
The Verisign Sucks Page.
OK, maybe I missed a story or two here, but what's the problem with Network Solutions? I have a couple domains registered through them (actually I need to renew them, they both expire in a few months, but...). Why should I not renew them with Netwok Solutions? Why should I go to someone else?
I'm being serious in this question (if this is a real issue). I've had no problems with them in the past, and I have no problem with giving them the few bucks they will require to keep the couple domains that I have.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
What do you have to do to get them to listen? Eight years!
Easy. Sue them.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
easyDNS
... and, most importantly, incredibly responsive customer support.
A little more expensive then other registrars but, then again, you've already found out you get what you pay for.
Registration and DNS management, regular and stealth web forwarding, URL forwarding, spam filtering (and a good anti-spam policy to kick off abusers), DNS redundancy, ACL access to your management pages
Search through Usenet for lots of recommendations.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Why is it that companies who's customer service gets so horrable think the magical cure is create a new company or change their name?
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
I wonder if they're ever going to realize that they're bleeding customers because we can go to godaddy.com (or 20 others like godaddy.com) and get the exact same thing for $9/year or less, which is 1/4 verisign/netsol's price.
Actually, I lied, it's not the exact same service. It's far better than anything verisign can fathom.
Do you have ESP?
I own three domain names, one of them under VeriSign/Network Solutions. Recently I had to make changes to the records for my domain names. It was a hassle.
How long has this company been at domain name handling? While they finally have a completely web based interface for the majority of functions related to domain names, you still have to use the eMail to hostmaster@networksolutions.com to change hosts records -- that is, your domain name's domain name servers. This shows blatant incompetency in regards to automation and their engineering staff.
How hard is it to make a little web form that is attached to a database? It's not.
Password, what password? I had been using the old crypt-password scheme for modifications to my domain names though the old eMail change method. When I went to use their website, I found that my account required a password. What password? It was not my old password, and they never asked me to modify my account. So I had to call up and get a password assigned to my domain name account.
And how long did it take for changed to propagate? For everything other than the hosts records, 24 hours or less. For the hosts modifications, it took over four days, and intervention by engineers because their system apparently was dropping the request for change. That would be four days of downtime for a website. Holy crap.
Trouble ticketing system for issues? They don't really have one as far as I can tell. I had to harass the support phone-droid to give me something to track the issue by, and she gave me some tracking number that they use in their database, but she seemed to indicate that they did not have any kind of trouble ticketing system.
If you are in business, you can't afford to do business with VeriSign/Network Solutions.
When they started switching to a user/pass system, they wouldn't give you that info by email, you had to fax to get it reset. Now, they'll gladly send the user/pass to the admin contact without bothering about anything else. Better, you can ask for your user-level password, which will give you control of all domains associated with the handle. ;)
And their attempt to restrict tech contacts not to modify admin info is a nice try.. Just edit the URL and you're done
have you been defaced today?
If you're thinking about moving your domain somewhere else, I would recommend you start NOW. If you wait until a few weeks before the name expires, Network Solutions will screw you around untill it expires and you'll have to re-renew with Network Solutions before you can transfer it (true story).
In February of last year I purchased the domain ravin.gs. To this day VeriSign still won't help me set it up...
After a month or two of emailing back and forth with tech support, trying to get them to sort out my DNS's, I gave up in frustration when none of the host registration things you have to do for each DNS actually got processed, and when I finally got them to work (or so it seemed) the host records for my domain still never updated.
The "24 hour" replies to email support NEVER took less than 2 days, normally being around 3-4. And their final solution after constant nagging on my part was "sorry we can't help you on email, call up our tech support number and get them to fix it". Unfortunately for me, I live in Australia so I'm usually sleeping when the number is open, and I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars in phone calls just to get them to fix their own problems.
So, being the Aussie Battler I am, I gave up.
If anyone wants the domain "ravin.gs", just email me and i'll transfer it to you for free (as in beer, speech, whatever - i don't want the fucking thing). It expires next month but I don't want it. It's got the NetSol curse.
... and then there were none
They probably kept it in the hope that someone would pay to be on the "waiting list." I don't know how much the waiting list costs, but I'm sure it makes waiting 6-8 months or more before releasing cost effective.
Get off my launchpad!
I just got spammed with a notice of a "new Network Solutions". Among other things, they're offering frequent flyer miles... So I'm no longer worried they'll make a big come back. :-P