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The Internet

Who is the Best Registrar? 334

Posted by Cliff from the where-are-you-going-to-register-that-domain? dept.
luge asks: "I've been looking around at a couple of NSI's new competitors (register.com, for example), and the information on their pages about services and pricing for them is underwhelming at best. I also haven't been able to find any good comparisons on the Web. So, in the experience of the /. community, what is the best registrar to go through for my new Web site? I'm particularly interested in interim services- i.e., I want to grab a few domains now but won't have a good connection/hosting situation for a few months yet, so I'm interested in what options there are for services like URL and e-mail forwarding. Of course, pricing is probably paramount, but ease of manageability is important too- once I get my hosting situation settled, I want to be able to switch over quickly and easily. Any suggestions?"

And the ever continuing quest to look for a decent replacement for NSI continues, and as far as I can tell via various rumors and experiences of other folks, this may not be a bad thing at all. We've handled a similar Ask Slashdot, but it's been four months since that was posted and I figure it's high time to revisit the topic since I still get a lot of these sorts of questions in the submissions bin.
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Who is the Best Registrar? More

Who is the Best Registrar?

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  • I have now bought several domains from joker.com [joker.com]. Once you figure out their kind of funky interface it is REALLY cool! You can change a lot of things through forms online with your username/password that would take a lot more hassle through NSI. Furthermore, it only costs 15 dollars if you are int he US and you can register for only a year if you like. They will provide DNS service for a small charge as well if you need it.

    The only drawback I have found is that CORENic [corenic.net] doesn't really seem to telly uo how to claim ownership over the DNS servers people have entered into joker and gotten handles for. As a result, my ISP doesn't get notification when I buy a domain. Does anyone know how to fix this?

  • www.nic.cx (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They rock - the lame .com registrars should take
    notice.

    Mark
  • Any registrar can't be worse than ol' NSI. That is not, of course, saying that the others are any good....
  • I've been very happy with Register.com so far. While they are a bit cheezy and the same $$ as NSI, they offer a service that I really appreciate: they provide DNS servers. This can be a real pain in the neck, because, too often, the hosting providers don't know what the heck they are doing.

    Also, it let's me be absolutely sure that I own the DNS, since the ISP never touches it. This may seem paranoid, but I've been burned before by these ISP's who will "manage your domain name".

    --

  • Although I think it's pure evil, you can always get domains in tonga (.to) [tonic.to] or niue (.nu) [nunames.nu].

    It's the internet equivalent of a "1-888" number, except that in this case, it's the little countries that sold out. However, maybe your name won't be taken...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].

  • The Selections... (Score:4)

    by kcarnold ( 99900 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @10:12AM (#1242527)

    The list of accredited ICAAN registars is at InterNic.net [internic.net]. This is just to let you know the alternatives, and if some registration company is really allowed to register domains.


  • On the other hand, register.com charges $35 a year, which is the high end of prices now.

    But, I will agree that register.com does make it easy to manage DNS settings. And I also reccomend managing that yourself, if you're up to it. They also will "park" your domain, meaning that attempts to visit http://www.yourdomain.com will result in getting a "we're moving in soon" message (covered in register.com ads, to be sure).

    Just because of prices, I'm not sure if I'd go with them again, but if you can afford it, the services that they offer are worth it.

    ~~~~~~~~~
    auntfloyd
  • What I really want to know is which registrar provides the least amount of services. You may find this wierd, but I like doing things myself. I've found that that's the only way to get things done right. I like to host my own own servers, I like setting up things on my *nix boxes myself. Anyone who provides email for my domain is going way too far. That's my responsibility, my perogative. So, here's my question, who out there has the cheapest service with the least amount of services. All I want is my domain registered and that's pretty much it. Maybe they could put me on their DNS servers, but that would be an added plus.
  • http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/02/26/20312 10&cid=28This post

  • register.com vs. Network Solutions (Score:4)

    by yamla ( 136560 ) <chris@@@hypocrite...org> on Sunday February 27, 2000 @10:19AM (#1242534)
    One of my domains is registered through register.com and the other through Network Solutions.

    The register.com folks have always been helpful, even calling long-distance to Canada to resolve a problem I was having with them. Also, making changes to the domain name information takes place almost immediately.

    Contrast this to Network Solutions. It can take up to three days to get information changed in their database and they often seem to ignore messages requesting support.

    I would definitely choose register.com over Network Solutions in the future. Of course, with the other, cheaper, companies out there, register.com may now have a run for their money.

  • OpenSRS (Score:5)

    by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @10:20AM (#1242535) Homepage
    OpenSRS [opensrs.org] (sponsored by Tucows) is probably the coolest thing out there. $10/year for a domain name ($9 of which goes to NSI). Of course, you then need to do a lot of the work yourself -- they work as a wholesaler, rather than end-user sales. Basically, they make it easy to set yourself up as a registrar. Or, do a search [metacrawler.com] for "OpenSRS" and find some places using their service to do the work for you.

    --

  • Register.com is not bad but I use networksolutions For FREE web hosting and domain parking, go to http://www.neotek.cc They have a Linux boxes and NT w/ FP2000 extensions. You can't beat free :)
  • --the #$%@^% submit and preview buttons are *really* too close together.
    This post [slashdot.org] from the ICANN story thread may be of some help.
  • Here's a question I'm hoping the /. community can help me with. When you register a domain, youre just buying the rights to a domain, right? Or wrong? I'm trying to figure out where the DNS comes in. Why do I need DNS servers? Is it so I tell them my site name and IP and then they put it in their database and then the information gets sent to all the other DNS servers in the world. Are we updating people's DNS servers everytime we request a page that our DNS server is unsure about and and then has to query another DNS server out there until it finds an answer? Or does the DNS that I would need have to do with all the subdomains I would add to my domain. This is all really confusing to me and I could use some answers.

  • NPS Internet Solutions (Score:3)

    by VP ( 32928 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @10:28AM (#1242542)
    I have been very happy with their service, both for domain name registration, and for hosting. AFAIK, they are the only ones who offer domain parking free, and the registration costs only $30.00 (yep, that's $15 a year).

    Check them out at npsis.com [npsis.com].
  • Get a clue. The government & acadamia actually paid for and developed the internet.
  • I registered with Register.com. The minimum they require are the addresses of your DNS servers. If thats all you want them to do, thats all that they'll do. I have granitecanyon.com doing my DNS (they do it for free) and I dont have any mail services at my domain - all it does is serve web pages (Thats all I want it to do - for now).
  • You REALLY don't want to see that!!!
    Cheers,
    Perrin.
  • I am in the process of setting up the OpenSRS system for my company. Seems quite straightforward but there are always those nagging doubts!

    Have people here used them and found that things really work and work well?

  • >If the ISO had been involved in videotapes twenty years ago, we might be stuck with >the absurdly inadequate Betamax format. BetaMax was a superior format than VHS. It lost out in the market because of Sony's licensing practices. A group of vendors got together to thwart BetaMax by creating the cheaper, and lower quality, VHS format. In the professional video realm, BetaMax-evolved formats are the standard for analog work. The next time you see a TV news crew, note the "BetaCam SP" stickers on their cameras.

  • Dotster.com (Score:4)

    by Julius X ( 14690 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @10:32AM (#1242551) Homepage
    Dotster.com [dotster.com] is what I used, and they gave me quick service and their registration fee was only $15/year(don't know if it's still that cheap though), which is $20 less than all other services. I highly recommend them.

    -Julius X

  • Re:Other domains... (Score:3)

    by Pascal Q. Porcupine ( 4467 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @10:33AM (#1242552) Homepage
    I personally prefer .cx [nic.cx], myself; they're cheaper, have great service, VERY nice policies (particularly when it comes to namespace conflicts such as in the case of trademark disputes - they'll only remove/freeze a registration with a court order), and, recently, have taken to providing free service for free(speech) and open source software projects.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine [nmsu.edu].

  • I'm currently looking out www.domaindirect.com which are in the business for some time now, a friend of mine use their service for a year or two now. They are with Tucows and OpenSRS (? I think it's the name of their own registrar). For 70$ for 2 years, you have the domain name registered + 5 emails and http forwarding, which is not bad. They have more services to be available soon (one pop3 account and so on). (By the way I am *not* affiliated with them.)

    I guess I'll give them a try soon... Anyone knows them better?

    Julyen

  • I just finished getting my business [duluoz.net] set up as an OpenSRS affiliate. I wouldn't recommend it if you're only going to be registering 1 or 2 domains -- for one thing, they make you prepay for at least 25. It's also a bit of work to get approved by them (they require you to take a test). But $10/year for a domain is pretty much free, and they give you (*and* your end-users) a lot more control over your domain information than NSI does.

  • I used enom.com. They have a good web based domain named manager and free email/www redirection services and best of all, I didn't get my email sold off and nailed with junk email like register.com does.
  • Just checked, and Dotster's price is $25 per year, which is still cheaper than any other service that I've seen.

    -Julius X
  • The OpenSRS [opensrs.com] model, whereby anybody with a bit of Perl know-how can plug into their API for registering domain names, really opens up a lot of possibilities.

    For example, one webhost I use, WorldWebserver.com [worldwebserver.com], offers free domain registration with hosting. But if you're getting, "just domain registration" for $25/year you get one page hosting of one-page site that you can change whenever you want, a catch-all POP3 email box, http logs including http_referer and graphical stats. That's a lot better deal that having your parked domain point at an ad for the registrar!

    You can actually do alot with a one-page domain. I've used a few as "storefronts" for affiliate links, or you can just use it for your "front page" and have your other pages on the web space that comes with your dial-up.

    Plus the tech support at worldwebserver.com is amazing. Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Oh and they use Apache on Slackware too.

    ========
    +++For-pay Internet distributed processing. [processtree.com]+++

  • Picking a registrar (Score:5)

    by .@. ( 21735 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @10:39AM (#1242563) Homepage

    First, a word about register.com. You may want to read through the DNSO archives [dnso.org], the IFWP [ifwp.org] list, and the DOMAIN-POLICY archives [internic.net] to see what register.com has been up to, particularly regarding the single-letter domains.

    You may also want to have a look at their registration agreement [register.com], particularly the bit on information ownership. They own all your contact information, and can do whatever they want with it.

    Note the section in 6d above where they explicitly say you give them the right to use your information for targeted marketing.

    Others aren't any better. BulkRegister [bulkregister.com] has been phone-spamming people with completely automated unsolicited phone calls, in violation of US State and Federal law.

    Joker.com [joker.com] and the other current and past CORE registrars have had significant problems in the past, and CORE is losing registrars right and left.

    Most of the registrars have had significant and in some cases highly-publicised problems interacting using the SRS -- the Shared Registry System, resulting in things like aol.com's ownership being transferred to an individual (and later changed back), and other domain names not owned by big companies not being so lucky in having their ownership info corrected.

    There's a problem with CORE registrars as well...several years ago, when people were once again trying to get new Top-Level Domains (TLDs), CORE managed to have a set of 7 TLD agreed upon. CORE registrars were pre-selling registrations in these 7 TLDs last year. They've now stopped, but should those & go active, it's still unknown whether or not anyone will have a fair shot at registering within them due to these pre-sells.

    I'd personally recommend becoming a member of the OpenSRS project [opensrs.org], and being your own registrar.

    If you can't or won't do that, then do the following: Find and take the time to READ each registrar's Domain Dispute Policy and Registration Agreement, and think of what it means to you if your domain name ownership is challenged. The challenges are mushrooming, and all signs point to corporations getting whatever they want. Go see the resolved UDRP cases [wipo.int] to get a feeling for how the wind is currently blowing.
  • I don't feel bad about using their services. tonic.to in fact was fast, easy to use and a great experience (albeit a bit expensive one). On the plus side there are words in Spanish or other latin languages that end in to so you can have a domain like juan.sos.recho.to which is a sentence neatly separated by dots. Quite nice if you ask me.
  • What crack are you smoking? You start off with a relatively weak argument, lose all credibility when you call Betamax "absurdly inadequate," imply that Visual Basic is a better language than ANSI C, and then lose what little coherent sense of any potential argument you ever had.

    Either this ramble was created by a very good rant generator, a passable troll, or a woefully-misinformed severaly-brain-damaged political activist who doesn't know the difference between free trade and anarchy.

    I suppose you think copyrights and trademarks are wrong and unnecessary too, huh?
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine [nmsu.edu].

  • Well, you do have a point there. Some kind of laws governing a system like that would easily prevent cases like the recent Etoy vs Etoys one...

    but, here's one of the biggest problems:
    if this is done, you could make an "ibm.com" website, win pubic opinion somehow, and then set up a fake e-commerce site. You could dupe thousands of users out of their credit card numbers within the 8 to 12 weeks it takes to "ship" the product before anybody notices.

    Besides, how would people decide? Some kind of poll scheme? Couldn't you just find a couple of free ISP's, dial in with a different IP each time, and stuff the ballot box?

    And how would "ibm.com" go to your site and IBM's at the same time?

    Betamax and VHS weren't called the same thing. In order for two things to make sense and have the same name, they either have to have two completely different functions, or be two versions of the same exact product (whether from competeing manufactururs or not). You can't have TAPEZ and have "vhs" TAPEZ and "betamax" TAPEZ, and expect people who buy TAPEZ to figure out which is which and which will work in their VCR.

    (Also, Betamax was a better, higher resolution format... the reason it didn't succeed is becuase it was Sony vs. The World.)
    --
    Talon Karrde
  • I've registered a handful of domains through register.com so far, and while the forms and pricing are very friendly, I did have a rather unpleasant experience when I had to contact their customer service about renumbering my nameservers. I never did get a satisfactory resolution on the issue. I would have been completely and extremely SOL if my ISP hadn't let me keep my old IPs along with my new ones, because register.com NEVER DID GET BACK TO ME.

    On a related note, what is the deal with this new thing where you have to register your nameservers?
    I don't recall ever having had to do that before.

  • Christmas Island - nic.cx (Score:3)

    by The_Jazzman ( 45650 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @10:42AM (#1242573)
    The Christmas Island registry (http://www.nic.cx) does a pretty fine job of things.
    Firstly it's only £20 for the first two years, £10 a year after that.
    Then they offer free domains to open source projects.
    Also they will give you unlimited email forwarding rules (i.e. as many email addresses @domain.cx to forward to wherever).
    Then they will give you web aliasing, that is http://www.domain.cx will display the content of, for example, http://www.geocities.com/wherever/mywebpage/
    Not bad for such a low price.

  • I'm also running through this kind of questions right now. I want to setup my web, mail, ftp, etc. server at home with a domain name, and I've got some difficulties figuring this all out.

    As far as I know, DNS servers "worldwide" use a cache system, which is refreshed only once every 24 hours or so, so if you have a dynamic IP address... your domain (mail, web, etc.) might be unavailable for as long as 24 hours every time your IP is changed. If you have a static IP but no DNS you can use www.granitecanyon.com [granitecanyon.com] which provide free DNS.

    For the time being I will try to use domainforwarding, which handle all the DNS stuff for you and redirect any request (http and mail) to addresses you specify (e.g. www.isp.com/~user, user2399@hotmail.com, etc.).

    If anybody knows how to do a setup using free DNS + static IP (cable or DSL modem), let us know!

    Final note: if you only want to "reserve" a domain name, I think (but I'm not sure?) you still must have DNS servers. It is called "parking" a domain name, some companies offer this service.

    Julyen
  • I just registered my latest domain with Dotster - fast, cheap ($25/year regular, $15 to reserve a domain and use their name servers (another $15 when you want to activate it)), and more convenient and secure methods of changing your records. www.dotster.com [dotster.com]

    Apparently Network Solutions was legally required to make it possible to change registrars - but they weren't required to make it an easy process, and they definitely didn't! I'd love to change all my other domains over to Dotster, and someday, I may take the time and trouble to do it...

  • Hey. Question for DNS Geek (Score:3)

    by Amphigory ( 2375 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @10:46AM (#1242577) Homepage
    Could someone who knows comment on what happens if you register with a company and they go out of business? I.e. Let's say you use joker.com (who are in Germany if memory serves) and they go under next tuesday. What happens?

    --

  • I have so far had good luck using qwho.com [qwho.com], on their front page they offer $35 registration for 2 years through namesecure.com [namesecure.com] .

    Namesecure.com was very prompt in their transfer of the DNS to my server and all around had good customer service (they answered their customer service line in only 3 rings)

    Namesecure.com offers other services such as email forwarding and the such, but I have not used nor priced these items.

  • I think pricing is what's bringing everyone down these days. Domains aren't expensive if you look at them from a business perspective, but if you are making a website for non-business reasons all you're doing is losing more money. And today actually getting the domain you want can cause you alot of grief... I'd personally like to see how many domains are "parked" and just being wasted out there.

  • Re:Question Regarding DNS (Score:3)

    by dexev ( 106608 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @10:48AM (#1242580)

    When you register a domain, youre just buying the rights to a domain, right? Or wrong? I'm trying to figure out where the DNS comes in.

    DNS is a distributed database system. Everybody who owns a domain name is responsible for keeping their domain's entries in the database correct and up to date. You can do this yourself, or pay your ISP to do it. When you go to a URL, you ask your (or your ISP's) DNS for the IP address of the site. If the server knows the IP, it tells you. If it doesn't know the IP, it has to ask somebody else.

    This is where the registrars come in. They maintain the "root servers" which basically keep a list of all the domains that are registered, and the DNS servers that contain the information about that domain. When you register a domain, you're paying for an entry in these "root servers".

    When somebody else looks for your domain name, their DNS server asks one of the root servers where they can find the information, and the root server points it to your DNS server. Their DNS server then asks your DNS server for the information, and your DNS server gives it to them. That's why you need a DNS server.

    Are we updating people's DNS servers everytime we request a page that our DNS server is unsure about and and then has to query another DNS server out there until it finds an answer?

    Yes.

  • We use http://www.DomainNameSystems.com with $15 domain registrations. FANTASTIC customer support, as well as User/Pass login system, bulk registrations and they also have a anti-hijacking program in place. They are new guys on the block, using a radically modified version of OpenSRS.
  • I have seen network solutions just be idiots too many times. If they lose your domain...oh well its not their problem. If someone you pay to register a domain in your name, and then makes themselves the registrant? Not Netsol's prob. If you have a problem like you need a domain transfered to another service or DNS, you will have to wait 4-6 weeks to get it done, or pay $200 to have it done right away.

    I like the .nu because it's cheep, and they have lots of names still avail. I mean $45 for two years? pretty good!
    JediLuke

  • Network Solutions is the first choice that comes to mind. They are slow and imposable to work with so your best bet is to find a computer company that will help you. I work at an ISP where if you want a domain registered we will deal with network solutions making life easier on you.I'm sure that there are many small ISPs that would apreciate the buisness near where you live where ever that is.
  • one thing that wasn't covered by the other answering post: the time to update information in the DNS isn't fixed at 24 hours. it can be as little or as much as you want; you set it in the configuration file for a DNS zone.

    if you expect a host to move around a lot, set the time-to-live low (180 seconds maybe). if it's an established host that doesn't change, make it 24 hours, say, or longer.
  • Driving home last night I heard a comercial for a .cc domain hyping it as the next .com. The comercial was for spot.cc [www.spot.cc] a registrar for that top level domain. What is it? And is spot.cc the only registrar for it?

  • DomainMonger.com (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Check out DomainMonger.com. Domains are only $17.
    Parking is free.
    Transfers are free.
    And, they have the best domain management system I have seen.

    Highly recommended!

  • That's a great philosophy. Really. I like the idea of not having any protections at all save the support of the community. I love the idea that if I'm in the minority, I'm fucked. That's a wonderful way to live. My slave-state mindest, apparantly, does not prevent me from seeing the beauty of being persecuted for any percieved difference from the majority. You fucking moron. JimBobJones who has always depended on the kindness of strangers.
  • I've used register.com [register.com] to register two domains. I don't think they are the cheapest, but I haven't had any problems.

    I am the Lord.

  • Re:Joker.com (DomainMonger.com is better!) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Joker is okay, but they don't offer free parking, and you have to pay about $35 to transfer your domain!

    Check out DomainMonger.com. They are cheaper than joker.com, offer free parking, free transfers, a better web-based management system, and they are based in the US, so there are no language barriers in the case that you need support.

  • I've registered a domain names through register.com, and helped a friend do it as well. I _would_not_ recommend them for anybody who intends to do the DNS themselves. I had problems with every single registration attempt.

    The first time I tried, their system was unable to accept the names and IP addresses of my authoritative name servers. This took several phone calls ("what's an authoritative name server?" they asked), e-mails, and well over a week to get it straightened out.

    Similar problems with the friend's attempt. Changes to the authoritative name servers didn't "stick," they registered two machines on my network which were not name servers as name servers (don't ask me how/why they did this), the answer to several of my increasingly impatient responses with thier reps was "why don't you just let us handle the DNS." This took ten days before everything was working properly.

    A request for a refund, "if you can't make this work, I'm sure I can find someone who can" was denied, "we don't give refunds, you'll just have to work through this with us."

    I'll tell you, I won't work with with them at all any more.
  • I have registered several domains in the last month or so, and I have been very happy with Dotster.com. The domains that I registered there came online a lot faster than the ones that I registered elswhere. They also offer registration from 15 bucks per year, which I think is a great deal.

  • myinternet.com (Score:3)

    by Evro ( 18923 ) <evandhoffman.gmail@com> on Sunday February 27, 2000 @11:03AM (#1242602) Homepage Journal
    I use myinternet.com [myinternet.com] and/or its mydomain.com [mydomain.com] service to forward my domain to my college account since I don't want to pay for hosting. The service is nice, when it works. You get free email redirection, but again, this is when it works. It's down a *lot*, probably 50% of the time when I try to access my domain it doesn't work. I guess they just make a frame and put the target URL inside it. This pretty much sucks, since if you click a link from inside the frame the URL doesn't change in the Location: box, and the title remains the same. The frames are most likely there so that they can put ads up eventually, but I don't really care, like I said, it's free. But with it being down all the time, it's pretty much useless, since you can't just say "joeblow.com", you have to say "joeblow.com, but if that's down, try www.cs.college.edu/~joeblow", and you have to do the same thing with the email forwarding -- "joe@joeblow.com, but if that's down, it's joe@cs.college.edu". But I guess it's better than nothing, and like I said, it's free.

    _________________

  • What if you want to do your own email?

    What's that in USD?

  • hearty agreement (Score:3)

    by Savage Henry Matisse ( 94615 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @11:05AM (#1242606) Homepage
    I registered through dotster at the beginning of February in order to take advantage of the $15 rate. My 2-cents: I had a few questions after registering, e-mailed them, and had a response in less than 6 hours. In my experience, good customer service-- esp. a good, fast response time-- is a very good indicator for a company's overall quality. Also, it's very easy to update/change account info (name-servers, for example) with dotster.
  • The Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Country codes are here [uci.edu].

    ...sounds like a "Carbon Copy" domain to me. :)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].

  • register.com sponsor grantiecanyon (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well register.com sponsors granitecanyon.com, the public dns people. But is dependent upon the referals that granitecanyon makes to register.com.

    So if you want to help out granitecanyon, just hop on over to soa.granitecanyon.com [granitecanyon.com] then click over to register.com and register your domain.

    Register.com offers a very nice interface. But they are a bit pricy.

    Personally I now use totalnic.net [totalnic.net] They offer great service. With no frils. Nice web based interface for changing DNS information. Althouh they are plaiged with the trouble that CoreNIC has...

    Overall for now TotalNIC is in my opinion your best bet due to the cheap pricing.

    Well good luck
  • it's $15/year, interface could use some work.. overall, I'm a satisfied customer. The only problem is that you have to look up special code for your dns server before submitting it.. takes probably a minute of your time but still, they should fix that.
  • I propose that -1 Troll is a user configuarable option, and that it can also be set as +1 Troll, or 0 Troll In other words, you decide whether a troll moderation flag incrases/decrease/doesn't change whether you want to read it.

    Damn, I post an interesting comment, and BAM it gets -1 just because it's from "Troll Boy".

  • Very cool. Also, it's a registrar that ends in a register, (x86, that is...) and that's what counts. :)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • Are you just doing this because you're in a bad mood and what to shoot your mouth off or something?

    Look up the history of the internet, why don't you? You'll find the Arpanet. It was used for years by just the government and universities. Later on, the web was built on top of, or maybe as a subset of, the internet. But that's basically an interface, nothing more.

    The government was largely responsible for funding and building the intital "internet", and then basically passed the ball on to other entities. To deny that they had any involvement is rather ludicrous.

  • Note the section in 6d above where they explicitly say you give them the right to use your information for targeted marketing.

    ...

    I'd personally recommend becoming a member of the OpenSRS project, and being your own registrar.

    Except that section 3 of the OpenSRS domain registration agreement reads like this:

    As further consideration for the Services, you agree to: (1) provide certain current, complete and accurate information about you as required by the registration process and (2) maintain and update this information as needed to keep it current, complete and accurate. All such information shall be referred to as account information ("Account Information"). You hereby grant us the right to disclose to third parties such Account Information

    Hmmm...sounds like a right to spam you to me. But domain registration information has always been publically available, so this doesn't worry my too much. I'm much more concerned about he UDRP [duluoz.net]

  • Anyone have any experience transferring their domains from network solutions? I just got a new server and have been trying to change the IP for my primary nameserver w/ NSI. No results, of course and their phone support is only Mon-Fri. I have another domain on dotster.com and it's beautiful .. web-based w/ username/password .. instant changes .. prompt support .. cheap as hell (I got in on the $15/yr deal). Anyways, what involves transferring a domain? Has anyone actually successfully done this?
  • Imagine that you go and type in your domain name to register in some small registrar's website. Some guy is sitting there and looking at the domains as they're being submitted. When he sees something good, he hits a key and that domain is registered by the registrar and you're told it's unavailable. I had this uncomforing thought when I read /. story on nsi messing up with a domain transfer and some other registrar yonking it. That registrar was affiliated with realnames.com that sells domain names. I think it's register.com? but I'm not sure. If I was registering a domain that is very important to me, I would probably use NSI for this reason.

  • Re:Joker.com (Score:3)

    by gleam ( 19528 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @11:20AM (#1242627) Homepage
    I must agree that joker.com is the best registrar I've used, by far. Register.com is more than double the price, and, while it provides dns services free, the service is poor. Changes to your records take 12-24 hours, and I've never seen one take less than 6. That's more than unacceptable, for many of us.

    But here's what I've taken to doing... check out ultradns [ultradns.net].

    They're currently in beta, but you can get both a primary and secondary nameserver space from them, with a very nice, clean, secure interface, for free. (as long as it is a personal/non-commercial domain name)

    You can have up to four of these, and the interface is both easy and powerful, so the advanced DNS hackers will be able to modify anything they need.

    I've also found that changes go through ultradns in between 15 and 60 minutes, usually on the lower end. That's very nice, especially if you have a semi-dynamic IP.

    I just registered a domain through joker.com, with dns from ultradns, and it's wonderful. My first domain was registered at register.com, and I just recently switched that domain to ultradns as well.

    That, of course, brings up another problem with register.com: they don't allow zone transfers. I lost all my zone information, and had to rebuild it all. It was very icky, but it worked, and I definitely don't regret it. 95% reduction in response time is worth it for a 10 minute hassle.

    Just my two cents, although it seems more like two dollars...

    -Ed Fisher
  • As of 15:20 EST, 10 Brit Pounds = US$15.9320

    Handy reference: Universal Currency Converter [xe.net]

  • I agree! This should work with phone numbers too. You shouldn't have the right to claim phone numbers for yourself. I can choose to call myself 1-900-HOT-GRITS or (310)555-1212 and THE MARKET should decide who the calls should go to! Down with evil imperialist government and regulators.

    Free enterprise should prevail. Thatis the way God intended it all to be!

    Oh, and Gore invented the internet too.
  • Sorry, FUBARed the URL; should be http://www.xe.net/ucc/ [xe.net]

    (note to self: always use Preview button)

  • I've been watching for a nice $11-$12 OpenSrs affiliate since OpenSrs was announced (since I need like 2 domains, not 25). One thing
    that puzzles me is that when you go to OpenSrs, they give plenty of details about becoming an affiliate, but no links to current affiliates.

    How do I find OpenSrs affiliates?
    (I can find Tucows affiliates from tucows pages, but none of them seem to have any info about domain registration.)

    Thanks for any info...
  • You might want to double check your own facts moron. The internet was under construction in the 70's. Appartently, you've never heard of a thing called Arpanet, which was the original internet, and was created by the gov't and universities. The mid-80's was when companies actually started to get on board.

    Maybe you should check your own facts before shooting your mouth off.
  • > What if you want to do your own email?

    Simple... enter the DNS settings for your mail server. If you've already got mail forwarding running, just go to the mail forwarding form and click 'Turn off mail forwarding'.

  • Re:Question Regarding DNS (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 27, 2000 @11:29AM (#1242637)
    You can run your own domain server (but only if you have a static IP!). If this is a Linux/UNIX machine, run BIND on it. List your computer as the primary DNS server, and GraniteCanyon's **2** DNS servers as secondarys (list them both, or GraniteCanyon may delete your domain). Have GraniteCanyon get their domain data from your system ("Create secondary DNS" on their page). You can use Everyone.net (or BigMailBox.com) to do mail forwarding if you don't want to run your own SMTP server (The admin can create several forwarding addresses for a domain, and users can register web-based accounts. But you can always delete user's accounts if they start stealing good names). You can use www.capibara.com if you want free web forwarding. Or you can just run the mail/web servers on your machine.

    Here's my BIND setup. I run it with the command "named -u dns -g dns -t /home/dns named.conf". This runs it as user/group "dns", chrooted to "/home/dns" for security, and reading the configuration from "/home/dns/named.conf". Here's my named.conf:

    options {
    datasize 4M;
    files 100;
    allow-transfer { none; };
    allow-query { localhost; };
    };

    controls {
    unix "/var/run/ndc" perm 0600 owner 0 group 0;
    };

    acl "granitecanyon" { 205.166.226.38; 216.17.165.20; };
    acl "me" { 127.0.0.1; };

    zone "mydomain.com." {
    type master;
    file "master/mydomain.com";
    allow-transfer { granitecanyon; me; };
    allow-query { any; };
    };
    Make the following directories UNDER /home/dns: "dev/", "master/", "var/run/". Copy your /dev/null device into your new dev/ directory. Add "-a /home/dns/dev/log" to your syslog's command line (in one of your startup scripts). Now create a "master/mydomain.com" file:

    @ SOA @ my.email.address. (
    2000022701 ; serial
    8H ; refresh
    2H ; retry
    2W ; expire
    1D ) ; minimum
    NS @
    NS ns1.granitecanyon.com.
    NS ns2.granitecanyon.com.
    MX 10 @
    RP my.email.address. @
    TXT "DeCSS source code goes here :) [or any other text]"
    A 1.2.3.4 ; your IP here

    localhost A 127.0.0.1
    www CNAME @
    ftp CNAME @

    This basic setup should work if you run your own mail, web, and DNS servers, with GraniteCanyon as your backup DNS. Replace my.email.address with your email address in dot form (i.e. "me@email.com" becomes "me.email.com.").

  • I'm using Enom also, and lately, I'm very unhappy with them because
    their MX host for my domain was busted, i.e. returning 'user unknown' errors for email. I wouldn't have minded if their smtp server
    was down for a while because that wouldn't have caused a fatal bounce, just a delay. *sigh*

    So I set up virtual email hosting elsewhere and tried to update the MX record for my domain, and that wasn't working either. I used their nice web page for updating my DNS, and submitted the changes. Over 12 hours later and not even their DNS servers have the new MX record!

    And they don't answer their phone or email.

    So, let the buyer beware.

  • NameSecure.com is TERRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I would not recommend this company at all based on my current experience. On Friday they started forwarding all my domain e-mail to some other address. I have been unable to contact them at all through e-mail or phone. They are completely unresponsive. You can bet that if any sort of problem occurs outside of regular business hours, especially a major privacy or security problem, that you are basically fucked. I'll be moving my accounts as soon as possible.
  • I like netwiz.net [netwiz.net], part of corenic.net [corenic.net].

    Registration is only $25 a year and changes are web-based. NetWiz is part of CORE, which hosts several registrars.

  • Re:Question Regarding DNS (Score:3)

    by karl.auerbach ( 157250 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @11:36AM (#1242645) Homepage

    What you are buying is a contractual right to have your domain name entered into a "zone file" for some TLD, "Top Level Domain", such as .com or .nu. As a contractual right you can do all the normal things one does with contractual rights - delegate them, use them as security, etc, subject to the limits in the registration contract.

    Be forwarned: Virtually every registrar has in its registration contract a provision that allows them to take your domain name away from you pretty much at their whim.

    As for DNS itself - there is a belief that there can only be a single DNS hierarchy. That is not the case. I have not used the ICANN root system for several years and am using several additional TLDs, such as .web. See my note on this at http://www.cavebear.com/cavebear/growl/issue_2.htm #multiple_roots

    DNS is a hierarchially (sp) organized lookup system - it is used to map structured names into records of various types, IP address records being but one of those types. So please don't fall into the trap of equating domain names with WWW presence - DNS is used for many other thins from e-mail to voice-over-IP telephony to geographic lat/long coordinates to public key information.

    Administration of DNS is organized along the lines of the hierarchy so the impact of updates is localized; there's no worldwide update protocol (although there is an update protocol between primary and secondary servers established by each administration in the hierarchy.)

    As for your technical questions, you might want to check out the O'Reilly and Associates book on DNS (it may be more than you want to know.)

    I also wrote up something a couple of years ago, before ICANNN, that might be helpful: http://www.cavebear.com/nsf-dns/background.htm

    --karl--

  • DomainMonger.com is the best! (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 27, 2000 @11:39AM (#1242646)
    I can't believe people are still willing to pay the full price to companies like NSI and register.com, when you can pay half the price elsewhere!

    Take a look at DomainMonger.com [domainmonger.com]. They offer better service than NSI and register.com, but they cost only $17 to register a domain. That's right, $17 to register a domain, with no other fees. And unlike Joker and Dotster you don't have to pay for transfers, and they guarantee that they won't raise the price in the future when you have to renew your domain.

    Not only that, DomainMonger.com [domainmonger.com] has a cool web-based management interface that allows you to make modifications to multiple domains at one time. The manangment system uses newer and better technology, unlike other registrars who are tied to the badly implemented systems that were put in place years ago.. Check them out!

    http://DomainMonger.com [domainmonger.com]

  • With the aforementioned http://joker.com you do everything yourself at $15 per year. If you want them to provide one or more name servers add $6 per year/per NS (Though you can get free DIY nameservers at http://soa.granitecanyon.com). I've got half a dozen servers registered through them without a hitch. I wholeheartedly recommend them.

  • $15 registration!! (Score:3)

    by plumpy ( 277 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @11:45AM (#1242654) Homepage
    At Nominalia [nominalia.net]!! They're decent I guess. Main lame point is a $60 fee to transfer ownership of the domain... they're set up for cybersquatters, clearly... (cheap initial registration, if you sell it, then you have to pay them, but who cares, cuz by that point you've made $$$ anyway...)
  • I really like Dotster. My LUG [dialug.org] got a domain (dialug.org) [dialug.org]for $15.

    You can also get free domain parking at http://www.parkpage.com/ [parkpage.com]

    kwsNI

  • http://www.communitech.net/ their virtual hosting pricing, and what it comes with, are hard to beat. they'll host on either solaris or (ahem) NT. They also have a dedicated server package, but that would seem overkill at first. Of course, they're not geared to doing only the registration part, but if you're looking for a home for it as well, these guys are great....hth

  • No DNS (Score:3)

    by TheTomcat ( 53158 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @11:50AM (#1242659) Homepage
    If anyone is looking to grab a few domains, but is not ready to commit to a host/dns provider yet, I suggest you check out soa.granitecanyon.com [granitecanyon.com].

    They let you create your own A, CNAME, and MX records, so you can register through any registrar you want, and if you're without DNS, have them point at the granitecanyon set up for DNS resolution. This has saved me many a time.

  • I highly recommend Dibby.com... They are fast (on the same backbone as yahoo) and relatively inexpensive (14.95 a month) Some highlights of dibby.com 200 POP E-mail Accounts 300MB Server Space Unlimited Traffic Unlimited Auto-Responders CGI-BIN Anonymous FTP Secure Server Daily Backups And alot more... I have had _zero_ problems with them. Great service.
  • I've wondered about that also. Imagine somebody's WHOIS requester archiving all the requests. Then once or twice a day someone takes a look at the requests and picks out likely looking ones and registers them. Poof, now the useful generic ones are gone. They could even snag some business related ones, the cost is low enough that they could just back down should someone challenge the ownership.

    Hmm, I just might have a new patent application... After all, someone patented teasing a cat [ibm.com] with a laser pointer.

  • Sort of. You pay them some money and tell them the IP address(es) of one or more DNS server which serves your domain. Some registrars (register.com, for example) and many ISPs provide a DNS service, usually at an extra but nominal fee, or if you're willing to learn how to set up domain records yourself, you can go to free DNS services such as Granite Canyon [granitecanyon.com], whom I use to serve the nameserver records for trikuare.cx (mostly since I need the flexibility of maintaining the DNS myself, since I have a bunch of different systems I keep under this domain, some of which are dynamic, some of which aren't, and I've also got my mail exchanging handled by a friend of mine, who is separate than the friend who runs the webserver which my homepage is on, etc.etc.etc.)
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine [nmsu.edu].
  • try A+ Plus [names4ever.com]. theyre an accredited registrar by icann. in your case where you dont or wont have your own nameservers to use, theyll let you use their nameserver to park your domain until you get yours up and running. they charge you only the fees internic charges nothing more.
  • register.com [register.com] censors domain names containing certain text strings. I ran a little experiment [autobahn.org] to test this, and was able to ascertain that they censor after several emails and telephone calls. They won't even tell you you're being censored; you just get a message that says "The domain you have requested is not available." Network Solutions [networksolutions.com] also censors, but at least they tell you when they do so and why.

    Do we really want to do business with a company that limits what we can say? I suggest going with a smaller company that doesn't consider itself a guardian of our morality.

  • Re:OpenSRS (Score:3)

    by tomblackwell ( 6196 ) on Sunday February 27, 2000 @01:11PM (#1242709) Homepage
    The OpenSRS affiliate I use is www.domainmonger.com [domainmonger.com]. They cost $17 per year, but if you buy more years, the price declines. I have been very happy with what they do and how their site works. It's very simple, but it allows you to get a domain quickly and cheaply.

    Note: OpenSRS domains take about 2 days to propagate through to whois and other registrars. If you think it isn't working, just give it one more day. It has never failed for me.
  • My experience with Granite Canyon is not very positive. I lost my password (yeah, i'm stupid) and there is no way I can't get it back. They have some sort of usenet password request service, but nobody gets their password using this service. It is down now, BTW. I am glad i do not use their service anymore.

    Sendy
  • register.com censors domain names containing certain text strings

    I think they all do, man. I'm pretty sure that the words "fuck" "shit" "cock" "ass" and maybe a few others are prohibited from domain names. I also think that's the policy of NSI, not of the registrars. Of course, I could be wrong...
    --

  • TotalNIC (Score:3)

    by Delta-9 ( 19355 ) <delta9.gmail@com> on Sunday February 27, 2000 @02:05PM (#1242724)
    I registered a domain with TotalNIC.net [totalnic.net] they have a web/email interface for changing all your contacts, and everything went down smoothly. I paid via CC, the fee was $35 for two years. I then used tzo.com [tzo.com] to dynamically house my IP address; since I am still stuck with a 56k PPP connection.

    Now I get mail to my linux router box via qmail. Everything works great.

    -d9
  • Is it possible to renew a domain with a different registrar than the one you signed up with?

    I am sure they all do this! The registrar that I used to register my domain (TotalNIC.net) [totalnic.net] will do it. This is what they have said in their FAQ:

    Q: Is it possible to transfer my domain(s) from Network Solutions to TotalNIC?
    A: You will need to fill out the transfer domain form online here [totalnic.net].

    Please be aware that NSI processes each transfer request on a case-by-case basis and therefore TotalNIC cannot provide any service guarantees for transfers.

    Your card will not be billed unless the transfer is successful.

    --

    Hope that helps.

    -d9
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • How about DomainMonger.com [domainmonger.com]? They charge $17 for one year, and the rates decrease if you register for multiple years at a time. They offer free DNS parking and do not charge fees for ownership transfers. Plus they don't retain any right to take your domain from you in the future. Pretty good deal if you ask me.
  • Remember when free speech was about allowing the communist party? Or open discussion of serious societal problems (cf. Howl by Ginsberg). Or any kind of literature... Or even "give peace a chance!"? Or freedom of religious expression and exploration?

    And now the best we can do for censorship is a few words that only crepuscular fools use anyway in our domain names. I'm not sure whether that means that there is hardly any censorship, or whether it means that we have so thouroughly censored our own intellects that we are no longer dangerous anyway.

    --

  • I`ve had some difficulty recently with easyspace.co.uk [easyspace.co.uk]: registering is nice and cheap, but it`s only after you`ve forked out that you discover that if you`re not hosting your site on their servers, they don`t want to know. I`ve had no reply to several emails asking them about changing the DNS to point to my computer, and a friend was forced to pay for a mailbox service he didn`t want.

    However, I can`t seem to find any other registrars in the UK that are at all decent. Either they`re incredibly pricey, or they`re entirely geared around website hosting and don`t even mention the possibility that a domain name can point to your own computer (or even have anything other than www. on the front of it). As it happens, I want the domain name for more than just a website, so even if I could afford it, a web hosting package is no good to me.

    Still, I registered the domain name with easyspace, and now I can`t figure out how to get my hands on it at all. Which is more than slightly annoying.

  • here is a much easier way go to www.dialupdns.com they will have to be your nameservers. you then run a small java applet (provided) and this automagically updates your ip in their dns. they will even do this for FREE! i use it for my cable modem to get access from uni. they do not support other hosts, such as ftp, mail, but for free you won't find a cheaper or easier deal
  • Ok, but that's not really an answer. That only explains what happens if Joker, specifically, dies.

    But the vastly more useful question is in the general sense. What happens if I register with [Reg Company X] and [Reg Company X] goes belly up?

    ie: if Joker goes under, then you say CORE takes over. So what happens if CORE goes under? Does someone else take over? So what happens if you follow it up the chain to the point where there's no-one to take it over?

    Or, assume you're with a company (not Joker, obviously) that doesn't do it "through" anyone else? What happens if they go kaput?

    It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think you just crossed it.
    --
    - Sean
  • I will agree to all of these except possibly irrelevant. The point of free speech is not freedom to use dirty words -- it is freedom to express ideas. Name me one idea that cannot be adequately expressed without vulgarity?

    Don't get me wrong. I think NSI and other registrars limiting this is silly and a waste of time. But I also think it is silly to argue about it.

    --

  • If you are concerned about security and reliability, then BIND may not be the best solution for you. It has a history of security exploits, and in general the codebase is a complete mess.

    Everyone's favourite daemon-revamper Dan Bernstein has an excellent DNS suite of tools called DNSCache which you can obtain from http://cr.yp.to/dnscache.html [cr.yp.to]. This looks pretty much ultrasecure (as most of his stuff is), and also very robust and modular. In addition, you don't need to muck around with zone files and so on, and the interface for adding information is ridiculously simple thanks to some scripts in the package.

    For example, to add a new alias to an already existing domain, all I have to do is :

    ./add-alias new.recoil.org 1.2.3.4
    make

    and thats it! Serial numbers etc all taken care of automatically for you.

    I've been running and playing with DNSCache and can recommend to anyone looking for an alternative to BIND.

    Anil
  • It's not NSI policy at all. Just run a WHOIS and check some combinations. A cursory check reveals that there are domains for ass.com, shit.com, cock.com, etc. The individual registrars set their own policies. I have found several smaller registrars that don't censor at all, and say so in their policy statements.

    I believe the registrars should be forced to tell you up front whether they censor or not. I found the fact that register.com won't disclose its policy very disturbing. Corporate censorship is a bigger problem than government censorship these days; look at how the PMRC and other hate mongers have shoe-horned the record industry in years past. We can't allow that to happen on the internet.
  • Twice today my phone rang unnecessarily -- BulkRegister [bulkregister.com] was vocally spamming me. I was called by some brainless little twit that had never heard of Tucows, and didn't seem to be at all interested in my protests.

    So, looking for a registrar? Don't use Tucows. Instead, put your energies into making a telephone RBL. :)

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