Networking - Uncensored

[#] Tue May 18 2010 19:21:57 EDT from Spell Binder @ Uncensored

One of the DNS domains I own is going to expire soon. It's currently registered with Network Solutions, and they want $34.99 for one year, with discounted rates for multiple years.

I checked GoDaddy and they can transfer the domain over for $6.99, and their current price is $10.69 for one year.

Register.com is asking the same as Network Solutions.

My big question is: Do you really get what you pay for when it comes to domain names?

Network Solutions used to be a royal pain in the ass when it came to making changes to a domain name, but the last time I had to muck with that was five or more years ago. Their systems may be much easier to use nowadays.

All I need is domain name registration. DNS servers, web, and e-mail hosting are already taken care of. I just need to point the registrar to the right place.

GoDaddy is obviously much less expensive than the other two, but how reliable are their servers? How easy is it to get set up with them? Make changes? Are there any hidden costs that I should be aware of?

Any comments on any domain name registrar are welcome.
Domain Binder

[#] Tue May 18 2010 20:33:43 EDT from Peter Pulse @ Uncensored

Network Solutions is a ripoff. I use dotster with zero problems in years.
Godaddy is fine too.

[#] Tue May 18 2010 21:57:13 EDT from Ford II @ Uncensored

Network Solutions is a ripoff. I use dotster with zero problems in
years.
Godaddy is fine too.

Network solutions is an insane ripoff, it's amazing they're still in business.
I use godaddy and I have had zero problems and while their UI may not be mac-intutive after a minute you can figure out everything you'll ever need to.

[#] Wed May 19 2010 06:48:42 EDT from fleeb @ Uncensored

Yeah, ditto what everyone's said about that insanely overpriced domain registrant. I use dotster without issue.

[#] Wed May 19 2010 09:15:33 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Little known fact: Network Solutions will give you a lower price if you tell them you're going to go with a different registrar because of price alone.

[#] Wed May 19 2010 10:20:40 EDT from fleeb @ Uncensored

Yeah, but who wants to go through that game?

[#] Wed May 19 2010 11:02:53 EDT from Spell Binder @ Uncensored

And how much lower will they make the price? I wouldn't necessarily need them to match GoDaddy's prices, but even cutting it down to, say, $20 a year, might be enough to get me to stay with Network Solutions and avoid the hassle of a domain name transfer.

[#] Wed May 19 2010 23:20:10 EDT from Ford II @ Uncensored

$20 a year, might be enough to get me to stay with Network Solutions
and avoid the hassle of a domain name transfer.

godaddy makes domain transfer painfully easy.
At least between registraars.
The odd thing is they make it insanely difficult to transfer a domain between two users of godaddy.
It's actually easier (if not cheaper) to transfer it away and transfer it back to godaddy than it is to transfer within godaddy.
Ther's a flaw there somewhere.

[#] Wed May 19 2010 23:40:54 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Yup. And they make it damn near impossible to consolidate multiple accounts, which is a pain in the ass if you're an ISP. NetSol makes it very easy.

[#] Wed May 19 2010 23:57:30 EDT from Animal @ Uncensored

crayons

[#] Thu May 20 2010 19:14:09 EDT from Peter Pulse @ Uncensored

Dotster is way cheaper than netsol and godaddy is even cheaper. I got dotster to price match godaddy so I stayed with them. There's a snowballs chance in hell that netsol would match the price I'm getting now.

[#] Fri May 21 2010 00:42:48 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Actually I think Animal has it right. Crayons are the answer. Who needs teh interwebz?

[#] Thu Jul 15 2010 12:06:23 EDT from fleeb @ Uncensored

I have what might be a sort of fun issue for you guys to ponder. I'm not really asking for advice, although I'm curious as to what you might think about the situation.

A customer installed one of our boxes in their facility. The box stopped working properly a couple of days ago. They sent the box to us, and it's working without any issues at all here in our networking environment.

When it was out there, if I used a remote login service to connect to the desktop of the box immediately after the box booted up, I could log into it. Otherwise, I couldn't access the box at all.

When I was finally able to get into the box, I noticed our services couldn't be restarted. Upon start, they would generate an error message indicating that the box itself was out of networking resources.

Have you ever seen that before? Personally, I've never observed that problem on a box. I guess I've always been in networked environments that were properly configured and designed.

None of our other boxes out there have this kind of problem, but admittedly, this box is kind of special, in that we have to have a single port made available to the outside world. Not a big deal, really... just port-forward to our box, and everything is peachy-keen. Nobody else has a problem doing that... but I suspect these guys did something "different"... since he was concerned that port-forwarding was a security issue. He felt more secure just exposing the entire box to the outside world and dropping our internal firewall.

(Note: The box doesn't appear to be infested, in case you're wondering... virus scans find nothing on it).

[#] Thu Jul 15 2010 12:18:41 EDT from Spell Binder @ Uncensored

If they turned off the internal firewall and exposed it to the internet, it's quite possible that it's getting hammered by some kind of denial of service (DoS) attack.

One way to try and figure out what's going on is to download and install WireShark onto the box. WireShark is a packet capture and analysis tool.
Since you're accessing the box remotely, you'll have to filter out the packets associated with your remote control session, but that would definitely show you if the box is being attacked.
Spell

[#] Thu Jul 15 2010 13:26:49 EDT from fleeb @ Uncensored

At the moment, the box is safely in our own facility.

But someone out there would need to investigate it, not me.

I think your assessment, though, is spot on. Someone is hammering the box from outside their network, and they aren't handling it properly. Likely, the problem will go away if they just put a firewall in place and forward the port we want.

[#] Thu Jul 15 2010 17:15:56 EDT from athos-mn @ Uncensored

I've seen a malfunctioning ethernet card on one PC bring an entire network of Windows machines down - they couldn't handle the amount of garbage the bad NIC was transmitting. In my case, the office was small, so I could turn of everything except the servers and bring up machines one-at-a-time until the whamo happened again.

[#] Thu Jul 15 2010 20:10:18 EDT from Ford II @ Uncensored

you could open it up to face the world at YOUR place and see if somebody finds it and beats it up.

[#] Fri Jul 16 2010 07:32:08 EDT from fleeb @ Uncensored

Heh... so we can repair it from the damage of improperly securing the network?

[#] Fri Jul 16 2010 11:01:14 EDT from Ford II @ Uncensored

Heh... so we can repair it from the damage of improperly securing the
network?

well I was just thinking that you could see if that was the problem that way.

[#] Fri Jul 16 2010 14:58:22 EDT from Spell Binder @ Uncensored

No need to open it up to the 'net. There are tools available for testing against DoS attacks. Unfortunately, I'm not in the know about freely downloadable tools for that kind of testing.
DoS Binder