12.21.06
ZoneEdit Downtime Sucks
I know - emotive title, but zoneedit.com downtime does suck. Yes, I was using their “free” service, but if it doesn’t work it doesn’t matter what the price is. Not working still equals not working.
So, I have been a long time user of ZoneEdit.com, and although the web based interface is clunky (I’m sure it’s someones pride and joy, but I’m sorry, it really is poor) and in the past the pages only looked right in IE (its better these days…) BUT their reliability was good and their extra features (mail handling etc) were really good. I’ve recommended them to people many times.
Yesterday, one of the sites I host on my server wasn’t working for people. Specifically, email didn’t work. Then everything stopped. Eh? Problem? nslookup couldn’t resolve the domain. After some searching, I confirmed my suspicions with http://www.dnsstuff.com/ which gave me a lovely (exterior) view that the two nameservers were not responding at all.
Zoneedit allocates two (random?) nameservers when you add a zone. (They have many and they are well distributed as they should ideally be.) Unfortunately (?) the two allocated to that domain happened to be 2 of the 4 that, according to their online network status report were experiencing “issues”… aka not responding. Yes, that happens some times. It’s not a multi-million dollar ecommerce concern. Ok. But… it had been over 24hrs and still not working. Below is a later message when 3 were still not working.
We are currently experiencing issues with NS2.ZONEEDIT.COM, NS3.ZONEEDIT.COM and NS6.ZONEEDIT.COM. We are aware of the situation and our engineers are working diligently to get this resolved.
If reliable DNS service is critical for your site, we recommend logging into your account, clicking on “Nameservers” and purchasing a “tertiary” nameserver. 3 nameservers are exponentially more reliable than 2 nameservers.
So… I waited the day out. Like I said, not a critical site. I’m patient…
Note the advice to purchase a “tertiary” nameserver for “exponentially more reliable” service… urgh, whats an exponential of zero? ZERO!
Today: still not working. Okay, I thought, I need some working nameservers.
I’ll login to zoneedit and remove the zone and re-add it. I’ll get new nameservers allocated to me (each of the domains I’ve added in the past have different nameservers allocated to them - just as long as ONE of them works I’m happy.) WRONG. Only the first 5 zones (domains) added are free and I’ve used that quota now. If you remove one completely, you’ve still “used” it, so there you go.
Please genie in the bottle… can I have more wishes? :~)
Anyway, I’m not that bitter except that it feels like a ploy to get people to purchase zone credits. I hope it’s not, because it would be much better to just straight up say “we want money now”. I’d consider that. But not some underhanded “oh, sorry. We are diligently working on this…. but buy a nameserver and it will be working again.” Hmm… I wonder if “paid” zones get hosted on the “down” nameservers. I suspect not, but maybe that’s not fair. What I would have liked is a new nameserver for that zone, even temporary. Oh well.
Google time… free DNS service.
I’m now trying http://www.everydns.net and it’s been fine so far. They even have a PHP API if you want to code into that. They do ask for a donation, and after I’ve tried it for a while, I’ll do that.
For some reason I prefer to give everydns.net a donation when zoneedit.com felt like they were trying to squeeze $$ out of me. Maybe I just like conspiracy theories…
Jonathan said,
January 4, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Well, asking is better than demanding i suppose. Surprising how a company, even one with a ‘free’ section, can have problems like that for more than a day though. I wouldn’t mind hearing about how everydns.net turns out, so remember to write about it again in the future.