The Saltmine Chronicles

Behind the scenes at a web hosting company

Clusty Controls

A reminder

by Sean Conner
on Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Just a reminder (if only for myself)—be aware of when your domain will expire and be sure to renew prior to the expiration date so there will be no disruption in service.

Also, be wary of simply sending a check in response to anything that comes in the regular postal service. Some of the more shady registrars will send out what looks to be an offical expiration notice but really it's authorization to transfer the domain to them! I simply toss those in the garbage and check my account directly with my registrar.

Oh, and how can you tell if your site is expired? If you can't get to it but you can ping the IP address of the server (or bring up the server's webpage) and your hosting provider swears and and down they can see it fine, it's most likely an expired domain.

The Technical Details (aka Technobabble)

What's most likely happening here is the hosting company in question is using their primary name server (which translates names like www.pickint.net into an IP address like 204.29.162.248) which resolves the domain just fine. You, however, are using the name server of your ISP, which has to first query the root name servers to get the hosting company's name server.

When the domain expires, the root servers are instructed to remove this mapping, so your ISP doesn't know where to get the IP address, so that's why you can't bring your site up.

Oh, and for the record, it was this domain that expired today, hence this entry (and no, this isn't the permanent domain for this blog).

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