> Until recently I told people, in my list's banner, to use shortcuts such
> as the following to subscribe/signoff.
>
> To signoff the EDI-L list, mailto:[log in to unmask]
> To subscribe, mailto:[log in to unmask]
>
> Apparently listserv.net is not on the network as a valid host, though
> there still is a Whois record for the domain name. I realize that this
> may have been an unsupported service.
There is some kind of bug at Network Solutions that prevents us from
maintaining certain of our domains (all our domains are PGP protected).
Roughly speaking, it works as follows:
1. We send a PGP encoded request.
2. NSI acknowledges the request as usual.
3. Several days later (up to a week), we get a form saying that the request
should be resent in plain text with no PGP encryption.
4. We write to the supplied contact address, mostly for legal reasons. We
have never ever received any kind of human response from this address, but
we would not want their lawyers to claim that we did not follow instructions.
5. We also call them and the usual result is that they wonder what exactly
we expect them to do if we are unwilling to do as we were told and resend
in plain text.
6. We resend in plain text, again for legal reasons.
7. NSI acknowledges the request as usual.
8. Over a week later, we get a form saying that the domain is PGP protected
and we should resend with PGP.
9. We write again to the supplied contact address and call, and they wonder
why we are bothering them instead of doing as we were told. Unless we
resend in PGP format, they cannot help.
10. The process is repeated more or less indefinitely. We are completely at
their mercy and they appear to have a keen understanding of what it allows
them to get away with.
We came that close to filing a lawsuit simply for the opportunity to be put in
touch with an intelligent human being who would actually try to understand
and help. We figured that they would be glad to accept a settlement where
they only needed to actually make the changes we requested and that the filing
and legal fees would not be much higher than the manpower wasted on
this nonsense with NO results. But we made a last attempt and a miracle happened.
They did not quite acknowledge the problem or try to solve it, but they made
the urgent changes we had been requesting for about 6-7 weeks. I
suspect that the non-DNS changes may not have made it, though. In case
you wonder why we did not switch provider, this also requires sending a PGP
authenticated request. Another problem is that there are a million alternate
providers, all of which appear to be focused on the "Get Your Own Domain"
consumer market, and it is not immediately clear which other provider would
do a substantially better job. I wonder why nobody appears to have realised
that companies will pay substantially more than $30/year for their DNS service,
provided that the level of service and reliability matches the price tag.
At this point, if you told me that NSI deleted LISTSERV.NET out of negligence,
I would believe you and start working on a press release. Note that while we
are no longer located at the address in the WHOIS record, we are
subletting that office space and the tenant forwards mail. The phone and
FAX numbers still work and so does my e-mail address. NSI now appears
to be "a Verisign company" so one can always hope for improvements.
Either way, it will be interesting to see how long it takes them to revive the
domain.
Eric
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