I am apparently not lord of all my domain

January 18, 2022 4:25 PM

This past weekend I planned to change my MX records to Fastmail but it didn't go well. This is purely a current best practices question, previous AskMeFi posts were pretty old.

So I purchased my current .net domain in 2001 with Domain People. In 2014 I switched my MX records to point to Gmail after previously hosting both Web and Mail at a couple of previous hosting providers. I even saved screen captures of how I did it for future reference.

This past weekend I tried doing it again on the same Domain People screen. Everything seems to have worked (?) but after 21 hours nobody saw the new MX records, not Fastmail's configuration wizard, not mxtoolbox. So I opened a ticket with Fastmail asking if they often had trouble with Domain People or if switching from Gmail was harder for some reason. They answered today that nope, as far as they can see the screen capture I showed and what they see on the Web suggests Domain People didn't actually make the change.

Now I know you're going to wonder why I don't just pursue the issue with them. But after 20 years I'm willing to switch to a new home for my domain, especially after this waste of time.

So it just boils down to 3 pure advice questions:
- how hard would it be to switch the home of my .net domain (I'm willing to "eat" the remaining 10 months)?
- what new home would you suggest (namecheap, domain.com, other?)
- any wisdom on how to make the move of the domain go smoothly?

Oh, and I do realize I could just surrender the domain and send change of emails to everyone, but I thought I'd ask for advice first.

posted by forthright to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

Best answer: Big fan of Gandi.net which is one of the domain registrars that gets mentioned here often. I've had domains for them for decades. They are used to dealing with technical people, they don't try (too hard) to upsell you to stuff. There is no bait and switch. They are not the cheapest. All of their tech support happens over email (I believe) and when I've had some dumb complicated and even my-own-fault issues they were willing to work with me to get it sorted. I have nothing but good things to say about them. Domain transfers in have always been simple. I have never had a reason to transfer domains out. I do have a few .net domains there.
posted by jessamyn at 4:55 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

There are two services at play here:

• The registrar handles your domain registration, and manages what DNS nameservers are associated with your domain.
• The DNS nameserver host manages the actual DNS records. Often registrars offer free DNS hosting, but they don't have to, and if you've ever had a web/email/whatever host that handles DNS, they'll often suggest (or even require) that you set the DNS nameservers to point to their service instead.

Given that, are you sure that Domain People are handling the DNS records for your domain? You should check the nameserver settings for the domain you are set to sp1.domainpeople.com and sp2.domainpeople.com before writing them off entirely. If they aren't then you should check with wherever they're hosted and change the DNS records with them if you don't want to break anything.

If you really want to change registrars, I like and use Namecheap and I consistently hear recommendations for gandi.net whenever registrar recommendations come up. If you don't want an interruption to your email, I strongly recommend getting to the bottom of what isn't working first though.
posted by Aleyn at 4:57 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I use and like Gandi as well.

Gandi and your current "home" are known as "registrars," and you can transfer a domain between registrars. Each registrar will have their own process for how to accomplish it. Gandi's is documented here: https://docs.gandi.net/en/domain_names/transfer/index.html
posted by whatnotever at 4:59 PM on January 18, 2022

Response by poster: Hi Aleyn. Well, when I log on to domainpeople.com and look at my Zone Records the first two are these (before the MX records):

@ NS ns1.domainpeople.com
@ NS ns2.domainpeople.com

which I realize is not the sp1 and sp2 values you and the link you provided mentioned, but on the other hand they are both domainpeople.com.

So, hmmmm, I think I have proven that I know even less about all this than I thought (and I didn't think I knew much).
posted by forthright at 5:09 PM on January 18, 2022

Best answer: Hmm, could be that they're legacy servers that aren't hooked up to domainpeople's current management interface; they all resolve to different IP addresses at least. You might query each nameserver for the zone record (or at least the MX records) directly, and see if there's a discrepancy, or file a support ticket with Domain People directly. You'll want to know what all your records are set to if you plan to migrate to a different registrar/DNS host anyway so that you can set that up with them and minimize any service interruptions.
posted by Aleyn at 5:17 PM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: OK, thanks everyone for your recommendations for Gandi and Namecheap, and Aleyn for your suggestion on things I should investigate for safety sake even if I do decide to jump ship.
posted by forthright at 5:19 PM on January 18, 2022

Best answer: I find Namecheap a bit friendlier and a bit less expensive. Not enough that I've transferred my last domain off gandi but enough that I haven't added any new domains on Gandi. I'm personally fond of having dynamic dns support at Namecheap, which I don't believe Gandi had the last time I checked.
posted by wotsac at 5:51 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: In this situation I wouldn't try moving the domain yet. Instead, I'd get different nameservers and tell the Domain People registrar to use them instead of the domainpeople.com nameservers. Bonus: when you do transfer your domains to your new registrar, you can keep using the same custom nameservers, which will make the process smoother.

Cloudflare is probably the easiest free custom nameserver to switch to: you just make a free account, add your domain name as a website, and Cloudflare will detect and copy over your old DNS records and provide you two custom nameservers to set at your registrar. After that, you can change to your Fastmail MX records on your Cloudflare nameservers and you should have a verification in minutes.
posted by michaelh at 9:15 PM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

So.. when trying to troubleshoot this, it will help greatly if you are very precise and unambiguous in describing the steps that you have taken. DNS can get a little confusing when you make changes because caching of answers means that old answers may well be returned by caching resolvers along the path even after you have updated the data at the server(s) that are authoritative for the domain.

Since you are dealing with domain name system issues it will also help if you have a testing tool that you can use that can (a) direct your query to specific servers, and (b) provide you with the full results of their replies (including anything all applicable flags, result codes, and the contents of the answer and additional sections of the DNS response.) The "dig" command (provided as part of the BIND package) is one such tool that I can recommend.

Anyway.. when you write:

This past weekend I tried doing it again on the same Domain People screen. Everything seems to have worked (?) but after 21 hours nobody saw the new MX records, not Fastmail's configuration wizard, not mxtoolbox.

the information you have provided is only enough to determine that the operation was not successful as you had hoped, without providing enough to go on to determine why.

I would recommend you start by checking:

• the delegation for your domain from the parent domain
• the zone serial number listed in the SOA records for the zone on each of the servers in the domain's NS RRSET
• the MX record data provided by each of the servers in the authoritative server set
• the TTL for the MX record

If you need guidance on how to check those things specifically, feel free to MeMail me.

If you have "dig" available it's fairly simple. Let's say your domain is "example.net". Start by finding out who are the authoritative servers for .net:

dig ns net.

Ask one of the servers listed in the answer section (which will be the authoritative servers for the .net TLD) which are the delegated nameservers for your zone example.net:

dig @k.gtld-servers.net example.net

That should list the servers that are officially in charge of answering queries for your domain. Hopefully you will recognize them, likely they will be associated with your registrar unless you have designated other servers as responsible for answering queries for your domain.

Let's say that the query to the .net servers confirms your delegation points to ns1.domainpeople.com and ns2.domainpeople.com.

Then ask those servers for the SOA records for your domain:

dig @ns1.domainpeople.com example.net soa
dig @ns1.domainpeople.com example.net soa

and look at the serial number fields to be sure that they (a) are in sync, and (b) were incremented when you made your edits to the zone.

Then look at the MX records returned for the zone by the zone's authoritative servers:

dig @ns1.domainpeople.com example.net mx
dig @ns1.domainpeople.com example.net mx

At this point you should be able to at least tell what kind of problem you are dealing with: either (1) the authoritative servers for the domain are giving a different answer than you expect, or (2) the authoritative servers are giving the answer that you expect but for some reason other resolvers are not finding it. If (2), the problem may go away on its own after data cached by other resolvers expires but it would be unusual for your data to be cached for more than a day unless you have deliberately set a high TTL on data for the zone. But at least check to see whether you are dealing with a problem of type (1) or type (2).
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:08 AM on January 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

I still have my website hosted at Gandi but last week I switched my email hosting to Fastmail — I had years of issues with Gandi and email hosting, some of which was owing to Gandi’s trust rating for email. Just something to consider. It’s not a bad idea to keep your site and email hosting separate anyway.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:02 PM on January 19, 2022

Best answer: Sorry, I left off a bit from one of the commands:

Ask one of the servers listed in the answer section (which will be the authoritative servers for the .net TLD) which are the delegated nameservers for your zone example.net:

dig @k.gtld-servers.net example.net

I meant to say you should query the parent domain servers for the NS record RRSET - basically ask the level above your domain who they think are the nameservers delegated to answer authoritatively for your domain. In my editing I left off the record type you want to ask for (NS). The command should have been along the lines of:

dig @k.gtld-servers.net example.net ns

posted by Nerd of the North at 3:54 PM on January 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks to help from Nerd of the North showing me how to use dig, it now appears that at some point over the 7 year period I had Domain People point to Wordpress and set Wordpress to manage the Zone records. I imagine I did that based on an upgrade to my Wordpress plan and a "How To" on the Wordpress site, since (as you can tell) I am definitely foggy about all the mechanics of DNS though I understand its purpose. I should have kept records of that change in my "Domains" folder, but clearly I didn't.

At risk of parroting what I don't fully understand, dig showed that Domain People was refusing to make a response because they were not the authoritative source to answer the question.

With my job I get these periods of free time intermittently, so I won't be able to untangle all this for a couple weeks at least. But I wanted to mark as best answers those I thought provided the most valuable information for choice of name servers if I decide to move, as well as those which helped me see that it was to my advantage to get to the bottom of this.

But I suspect this thread may be of use for others some day (?) so really all of the answers are useful in that respect.

Thanks!
posted by forthright at 7:00 AM on January 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm gonna chime in to say I HATE Gandi. About 10 years ago they froze one of my domain names and refused to give it back to me. I tried to transfer it to another registrar and they refused to let it go. I ended up losing the domain after owning it for years. It was a long time ago and I no longer recall the particulars but it was a nightmare to deal with.

I switched to Pair and still have 20+ domains with them without once having an issue.
posted by dobbs at 11:00 AM on January 21, 2022

Response by poster: Just a final confirmation that once I had time to try again, I was able to set-up my Fastmail account by changing the MX records at Word Press (not Domain People) and the rest of the process went smoothly. So that was my mistake.
posted by forthright at 12:02 PM on January 27, 2022 [1 favorite]