[NCSA-discuss] DNS Questions

[Steven Champeon]

on Tue, Feb 21, 2006 at 10:27:45AM -0500, Derek Featherston wrote:
> How do I go about making such a transition? 

You visit your registrar, and using whatever procedure they have, update
the DNS servers for your domain. As procedures vary, and as I'm not that
familiar with aitdomains as a registrar, that's about all I can say.

> Do I need to contact AIT, or can my ISP/provider simply seize the zone? 

Given that AIT is your registrar, you will need to go through them (or,
use their automated tools as appropriate).

> I'd prefer to deal as little with AIT as possible. 

That's going to be rather difficult if you are intending to continue
using them as your registrar.

> Will it be necessary for us to re-register our domain name through a
> different registrar?

If you want to get away from AIT, yes - though it's not a "re-registration"
so much as it is a "transfer".

> I've never dealt with any of these aspects of DNS before, and I've
> never personally registered or re-registered a domain, so any insight
> would be greatly appreciated. And a step-by-step suggested procedure
> would be wonderful.

In my experience, the worst registrar is whatever one you're using at
the moment. I hated NSI/Verisign, for various reasons (primarily had to
do with their failure to support PGP) and so I moved one domain over to
register.com, got great, courteous customer service, a decent Web UI,
etc. Within six months 1) I'd moved all of my domains there, and 2) they
had broken their Web UI and outsourced all of their customer service. :/

You're registered for the next five years with AIT, which is the only
cost you'll need to consider if you want to transfer, as IIRC it may
not transfer with your domain (yes, that sucks).

I've heard good things about the Tucows/OpenSRS service.

Also, bear in mind that whois != the root servers. 

schampeo at habanero:1024 $ dig cirruspharm.com

; <<>> DiG 9.2.3 <<>> cirruspharm.com
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 63817
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 3, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;cirruspharm.com.               IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
cirruspharm.com.        13189   IN      A       216.117.148.63

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
cirruspharm.com.        13189   IN      NS      ns2.aitcom.net.
cirruspharm.com.        13189   IN      NS      ns0.aitcom.net.
cirruspharm.com.        13189   IN      NS      ns1.aitcom.net.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns2.aitcom.net.         4619    IN      A       208.234.1.36

;; Query time: 6 msec
;; SERVER: 216.27.21.209#53(216.27.21.209)
;; WHEN: Tue Feb 21 10:48:36 2006
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 129

AIT actually has three NS records for your domain, not two. 

-- 
hesketh.com/inc. v: +1(919)834-2552 f: +1(919)834-2554 w: http://hesketh.com/
antispam news, solutions for sendmail, exim, postfix: http://enemieslist.com/