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  • From: Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>
  • To: Internetworkers <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] domain name registration
  • Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 08:54:26 -0400

on Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 02:58:13AM -0400, Bob Kucera wrote:
> How worthwhile is domain name registration?

As a way to accelerate aging, it works great.

> It seems like a good way to spend some money on my tech habit. Is
> there a preferred registrar for a domain name and dns service?

Not really. In my experience, they all suck in some ways, and it's a matter
of finding one that sucks less in the ways that matter most to you.

NSI: evil monopolist, despite "competition"
register.com: I switched to register from NSI and for a week, they had
excellent customer service, which they promptly outsourced to a firm
that knows nothing and has no access to the systems you're calling to
complain about.
joker.com: heard good things. cheap.
godaddy.com: silly name. heard good things.
dotster: it's not spam if you're a customer, even if they send it
once a day for a year.

Don't use .nu, as they charge more for individual acts of necessary
maintenance (such as updating your name servers or contact info, which
is done automatically via Web forms anyway) than for the initial
registration.

There are dozens of other registrars. Most of them don't even provide
a working whois service (port 43 tcp), which is the basic requirement
for accreditation by ICANN. Apparently, ICANN only cares about NSI and
dundjerski.com, not about the fact that godaddy.com's /own whois record/
lacks IP addresses for its primary and secondary dns servers. Or that
dotster's is the same way. Or that namezero gives '111-111-1111' as
their phone number.

Whois is a joke. ICANN is a joke.

Domain registration is an administrative nightmare and policy sinkhole.

> it looks like the thing to do is to roll up my sleeves and really
> research them by cost of registration, services provided, cost of dns
> registration is an add-on (I suppose to be researched separately), and
> I wonder which of these companies will drop out of business and leave
> me having to change registrars.

Tip: domain names are cheap. Don't think you're saving anything by going
with the $5/yr registrar versus the $35/yr registrar; you're not. The
only problem is that support from the $35/yr registrar will likely cost
you thousands of dollars a year if you have any significant investment
in their services, as you'll spend your time in limbo on hold here on
earth. The benefit is that you get to go straight to heaven when you
die, and you'll never see an NSI support rep again (they have their own
circle of hell set aside, I am quite sure).

Also, if you're registering multiple domains, check the registrar to
see if you will have to edit /every single record/ every time you change
any information about a contact. register.com, for example, has no way
of modifying a contact handle - if I have fifty domains registered to
'hostmaster AT hesketh.net' (and I do) and I need to change the contact
mailing address, I have to do it on /all fifty/, one at a time. Feh.

If I'd saved anything on registration fees, and I didn't, the savings
would have been eroded right there. As I didn't save anything but hassle
and the gnawing discomfort at supporting an unresponsive monopolist,
as it was I was out some hours /and/ the fuzzy good feeling I got from
dumping NSI, where I could have accomplished the update in a few minutes,
via automated email-template processes, instead of dicking with a Web
form, over and over and over.

Like I said, you need to find the registrar that least offends your most
important sensibilities.

--
hesketh.com/inc. v: (919) 834-2552 f: (919) 834-2554 w: http://hesketh.com




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