When Domain Resolution just Stops one Day.

[Stephane Bortzmeyer]

On Tue, Jul 31, 2007 at 08:12:37AM -0500,
 Martin McCormick <martin at dc.cis.okstate.edu> wrote 
 a message of 38 lines which said:

> What happened last week was that the address for
> www.healthsciences.okstate.edu spontaneously stopped resolving via a
> system on our campus that is a slave to the okstate.edu zone but
> didn't know about osu-com.okstate.edu until yesterday after at least
> 4 years of flawless operation.

www.healthsciences.okstate.edu is an alias for
blackboard.osu-com.okstate.edu. The osu-com.okstate.edu is served by
only two name servers (which is low), both apparently in the same
place (so they have a high probability to break at the same time).

As of now, one of the two name servers, ns2.osu-med.org, is dead and
never replies. This leaves only one name server, ns1. If it goes down,
the domain breaks. I believe there is no need to search for a more
complicated explanation.

> how can I make sure these deligated zones don't run for 3 or 4 years
> and then quit for no good reason.

Set up more name servers, located in different places and, of course,
not running MS-Windows.