Domain Name Registrar vs. Webcountry Hosting...Who do I believe?

Sat Nov 11 09:11:44 UTC 2000

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-users-bounce at isc.org [mailto:bind-users-bounce at isc.org]On
Behalf Of Mathias Körber
Sent: 10 November 2000 18:36
To: CT_SAF; comp-protocols-dns-bind at 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 <200011091727.JAA14582 at 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