Friday, September 16, 2005

Fun with domain registrar namesecure

My company's domain names stopped resolving during the middle of the day. I tested my registrar/dns provider's servers, and found that they weren't answering any queries about my domain name, or even other domains names. Here follows my attempts to resolve the issue:


Date: 9/16/2005 2:00PM EST (ish)
My original problem report via the namesecure website:

on 9/16/2005, at 2:00pm EST, I noticed an outage with our domain names that are being served by dns(1,2).namesecure.com

Please fix this asap!

dig @64.62.166.88 www.mydomain.net

; <<>> DiG 9.2.5 <<>> @64.62.166.88 www.mydomain.net
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

However, the nameserver isn't completely unresponsive:

# dig @64.62.166.88 www.namesecure.com

; <<>> DiG 9.2.5 <<>> @64.62.166.88 www.namesecure.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 4989
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.namesecure.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.namesecure.com. 86400 IN CNAME namesecure.com.
namesecure.com. 86400 IN A 64.62.166.106

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
namesecure.com. 86400 IN NS dns1.namesecure.com.
namesecure.com. 86400 IN NS dns2.namesecure.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
dns1.namesecure.com. 86400 IN A 64.62.166.88
dns2.namesecure.com. 86400 IN A 206.169.98.34

;; Query time: 164 msec
;; SERVER: 64.62.166.88#53(64.62.166.88)
;; WHEN: Fri Sep 16 14:06:55 2005
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 136


Date: 9/16/2005 2:30PM EST (ish)
About 30 minutes later the problem went away and my domain names started resolving again

Date: 9/19/2005 3:45PM EST
Namesecure's reply

Dear Trevor Harrison,

Thank you for contacting NameSecure Support. We are focused on delivering quality customer service and to addressing the issues you are having.

The website for mydomain.net is resolving. We apologize for any inconvenience you have experienced.

We hope this information has been helpful. For inquiries regarding this matter, please reply to this e-mail address (support@namesecure.com) and reference Service Request # XXXXXXXXXXX. For all other issues, please contact us via our online form at http://www.namesecure.com/support.

Sincerely,

Brent S.

The NameSecure Team


Date: 9/20/2005 9:23AM EST
Ok, here's my reply:

Yes, it is resolving now, but for at least 30 minutes it wasn't resolving on either dns1 or dns2 of your nameservers. (nothing was resolving on your nameservers except for namesecure.com itself) That's BOTH of your nameservers, effectively down at the same time. That's unacceptable. Please give me a reason for this lapse.

-Trevor


Date: 9/22/2005 11:28AM EST
Namesecure's reply

Dear Trevor Harrison,

Thank you for contacting NameSecure Support. We are focused on delivering quality customer service and to handling requests quickly and efficiently.

Your issue has been escalated to the technical service delivery team.

As soon as we have resolved your issue(s) we will notify you via e-mail. Issues are typically resolved within 2 to 3 business days.

We hope this information has been helpful. For inquiries regarding this matter, please reply to this e-mail address (support@namesecure.com) and reference Service Request # YYYYYYYYY. For all other issues, please contact us via our online form at http://www.namesecure.com/support.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey M.

NameSecure Support
support@namesecure.com
www.namesecure.com


Finally! Moving up the feeding chain to someone who knows what they are doing.


Date: 9/27/2005 2:41PM EST
Namesecure's followup

Dear Trevor Harrison,

I am aware of no issues with the servers that would have caused your website to be unavailable. Please specify the date and time and I will escalate the issue to one of our hosting administrators and have it investigated.

If you have additional questions please contact us at www.namesecure.com/support between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. EST Monday-Friday.

Thank you for choosing NameSecure!

Sincerely,

Christine001
The NameSecure Team


Date: 9/27/2005 2:54PM EST
Really? Sarcasm fails me.

My reply:

I specified the date and time in the original report. Do you need it again?
I've attached a copy of my original report to this message. [1]

Also, I would like to be put in touch with your supervisor to discuss the quality of the responses I receive.

-Trevor
[1] I've learned to keep copies of my original report since your system doesn't have any method to review the history.


Date: 10/3/2005 1:21PM EST
Namesecure's followup

Dear Trevor Harrison,

Thank you for contacting NameSecure Support. We are focused on delivering quality customer service and to handling requests quickly and efficiently.

Your issue has been escalated to the technical service delivery team.

As soon as we have resolved your issue(s) we will notify you via e-mail. Issues are typically resolved within 2 to 3 business days.

We hope this information has been helpful. For inquiries regarding this matter, please reply to this e-mail address (support@namesecure.com) and reference Service Request # ZZZZZZZZZZZ. For all other issues, please contact us via our online form at http://www.namesecure.com/support.

Sincerely,

Jarvis S.

NameSecure Support
support@namesecure.com
www.namesecure.com


Date: 10/4/2005 12:06PM EST
Namesecure's followup

Dear Trevor Harrison,

The website for mydomain.net appears to be resolving correctly at this time.

If you have additional questions please contact us at www.namesecure.com/support between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. EST Monday-Friday.

Thank you for choosing NameSecure!

Sincerely,

Christine
The NameSecure Team


Date: 10/4/2005 3:39PM EST
My reply

Are you joking? Or are you some robot who's only response is "the website for ${domainame} appears to be resolving at this time"?

Please answer all of my issues. Not just the ones that you can brush off by deliberately misunderstanding the question.

-Trevor


Date: 10/7/2005 11:11AM EST
Namesecure's reply

Dear Trevor Harrison,

We are truly sorry but we are not aware of any downtime in the past few weeks, but it is possible the servers where taken off line for a brief period of time for maintenance, it is possible that there where other servers down in the network, there are many possibilities and we can pinpoint the issue if it is already corrected by the time we process your request.

If you have additional questions please contact us at www.namesecure.com/support between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. EST Monday-Friday.

Thank you for choosing NameSecure!

Sincerely,

Christine001
The NameSecure Team


Date: 10/7/2005 11:44AM EST
My reply

Other than the fact that your reply doesn't really parse well (did you have a typo or forget a 'not' or "can't" in there somewhere?), I think I understand what you are saying about your service: customer outages of less than 2-3 business days (your standard response on your turn around time) aren't important enough to be discussed because the problem has already been fixed by the time you get around to the problem report.

However, I'm getting frustrated with you ignoring parts of my email that aren't convient. You still haven't giving me any contact info for your supervisor, or at least told me to go jump in a lake.

Just for the comedy of our conversation over the last few weeks regarding this issue, I've turned it into a thread on a webpage that you can browse:

http://www.harrison.org/~trevor/namesecurefun.html

-Trevor


Date: 10/18/2005 1:23PM EST
Namesecure's reply

Dear Trevor Harrison,

The issue with the down time could not be pinpointed it may or may not have been something within our system or within a system outside of our control, meaning backbone providers, rootzones updates, etc. For this reason there is a disclaimer of warranties which can be found in our service agreement located at http://www.namesecure.com/en_US/index.jhtml?cat=agreementi&subCat=null.

If you have additional questions please contact us at www.namesecure.com/support between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. EST Monday-Friday.

Thank you for choosing NameSecure!

Sincerely,
Christine001
The NameSecure Team

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